I don't play WBH at all, I've tried it and it's nuts. I was curious about a correlation with wild barrels and pauses, now I see there isn't.
However, that is some very interesting data that FastEddie just pointed with the 45 second difference, this means that timer ticks are not a separate timer put in sync with Kong barrel releases, timer ticks are actually triggered by kong barrel releases, this assures last barrel at 000. This explains the first two timer counts on the barrel board are always a little quicker, because of the first barrel being a wild barrel.
I guess a real proof would be to do the timer of a level 3 board to 000, and compare it with WBH level 3 down to 000.