Driving Angelo Lazaris's Lotus Exige GT3, Barton posted a best time of 1min. 30.139sec. around SMP's 3.93km Grand Prix circuit. That was good enough for an impressive seventh outright in a field dominated by purpose-built time attack cars with far more power and aerodynamic downforce than the diminutive Lotus GT racer.

That was just over a second off the fastest time set at the 2013 V8 Supercar test day – on treaded production car racing tyres! It was also 1.777sec. quicker than V8 Supercar driver Warren Luff achieved in the same car at its previous WTA appearance in 2011.

All things considered, Barton was happy with his performance.

"It was a pretty good result in basically a circuit racing car competing against purpose-built time attack cars," he said. "Time Attack has changed a lot since it started in 2010. Back then, the top cars were mainly production touring cars – Lancer Evos, Impreza WRXs and Nissan GTR R32s with their turbos at maximum boost, bigger rear wings and maybe front splitters.

"Now the top cars put out close to 1000kW. They have massive rear wings, and big front splitters with winglets. They're built to do one flying lap at a time. They wouldn't hold together for five laps, let alone a long-distance GT race!

"When Ian Luff drove the Prep'd Lotus in 2010 he was only a second or so behind the winner. The car's pretty much unchanged since then, so I wasn't expecting to get close to the top cars this year.

"But my best lap was more than a second quicker than Luffy's 2011 time, so that was very satisfying."

SYDNEY MOTORSPORT PARK 'GRAND RIX' CIRCUIT - 3.93km

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