Interview Maritimo Racing’s Tom Barry-Cotter 17 March 2010
In this pre-season interview PowerboatPro discussed with Tom the 2009 season, the highs and lows, developments on the boat and we look ahead to 2010. What is sure is that in 2010 Maritimo will not race the U.I.M. Class 1 powerboat World Championships. This year Maritimo will focus on racing on their home turf, Australia, in the Australian Offshore Powerboat Club’s (AOPC) championships. Let’s find out Tom’s take on things.
That powerboating is a virus that is often carried from father to son is certainly applicable to the Barry-Cotter family from Australia. Father Bill, former Class 1 racer and Grand Prix winner, introduced Tom to the Australian Powerboat series in 2006. After that Tom has raced in the Class 1 World Championship with considerable success. For next year it is back to the Australian series for Tom. The goal is to win the Australian Championship again and to use this year away from the Class 1 World Championship as a test and development year, to come back better and stronger than ever for the 2011 Class 1 World Championship series.
Tom Barry-Cotter was born on March 27th 1988 in Sydney Australia and currently lives on Australia’s Gold Coast. From an early age, Tom was involved in all sorts of sports. It started with go-carting as a kid. Going through high school he was involved in sailing at a high level. Tom even brought home a state championship. His current hobbies are wake-boarding, snow skiing and surfing. Living at the Australia’s beautiful Gold Coast, surfing might be a hard hobby not to have.
Apart from being a powerboat racer, Tom is also attending Queensland University in Brisbane where he studies industrial design. Later on in life, Tom would like to be involved in designing boats. This could be in the family business as the Barry-Cotter family is not only involved in racing boats but also in designing and building them. Tom´s father Bill started a brand by the name of Riviera in the early 1980´s. The company was sold in 2002 and in 2003 Bill started the company named Maritimo which is now still operating on the global market with the Aegean brand. The Barry-Cotter family will be launching this brand officially, soon after this interview was done (17th March 2010). Aegean will also be prominently mentioned on the new and improved Class one boat that Tom will race in the Australian Class one Championship. This improved Class one boat, as is the rest of the range of Maritimo products, was designed by Bill Barry-Cotter. Tom, putting his studies into practice, is involved in developing the race hull in close cooperation with his dad and Peter McGrath.
When we asked Tom whether not performing on a global platform in 2010 would hurt sales for the Maritimo brands, Tom immediately hails the Maritimo dealer network. He agrees there might be less TV exposure outside of Australia that would get the Maritimo/Aegean name out there but he is convinced the professionalism and client network of the Maritimo dealers, will continue to drive sales.
After racing in the Class 1 World Powerboat Championship for the Spirit of Norway team together with Pal Virik Nilsen, both of them made the transition to the Maritimo team. For the 2010 Australian Class one Championship they will operate as much as possible as a team together again. As Tom rightfully states it is the hours you have in the seat together that make you an efficient team. With one guy operating the throttles and the other steering the boat you should really be able to trust the guy sitting next to you blindly. And there is just no substitute to build that trust than hours and hours of racing together.
As the team driving the Maritimo boat together, Pal and Tom will aim to win the Australian Class one Championship this year. This Australian Championship is organized to include six races held all over Australia. The Championship organizers are the AOPC or the Australian Offshore Powerboat Club. The AOPC 2010 Australian Powerboat Championship calendar for 2010 looks as follows:
2010 CALENDAR
Rnd 1, Newcastle, April 10th & 11th
Rnd 2, Mackay, June 26th & 27th
Rnd 3, Townsville, July 3rd & 4th
Rnd 4, Redcliffe, September 18th & 19th
Rnd 5, Geelong, November 6th & 7th
Rnd 6, Melbourne, November 13th & 14th
We from PowerboatPro will keep you updated regularly on Tom’s exploits in the Australian championship and get you up to speed on the rest that is going on in the Australian Championship once the season is under way.
But that is all looking to the future. What about 2009? What are Tom’s highs and lows of the previous season? On the sunny side Tom sees that the boat was one of the fastest in a straight line in the Class 1 World Championship field. The boat also performed well when running in the battle for pole. On the rainy side Tom says that the 2009 boat was a tricky boat to handle. In the hands of several pilots the 2009 model has spun and rolled. Better handling and acceleration from the corners was thus one of the focus points in developing the 2010 model. Reliability of the engines has also been a focus for the development team and both seem to have improved. “We can of course only be sure of that once the boat is in the water and racing at speed for a considerable amount of time”: Barry- Cotter says.
It goes without saying that also for Tom, the lowest low in the 2009 season was the terrible crash of the Victory boat involving the tragic loss of Jean-Marc Sanchez and Mohammad Al Mehairi. This of course was a terrible shock for all the pilots racing on the same water with them at that time. Going towards the 2010 season from there and looking at the scale of the accident, Maritimo took the lessons learned with them and decided the structure of the cockpit needed strengthening. With the season opener of the Class 1 World Championship in Rio de Janeiro in the last weekend of March, Maritimo would not have had the time to adjust the cockpit structure of the boat before the first race. This made them decide not to enter the 2010 Class 1 World Championship this year. With the Australian Championship starting later and the boat being in Australia longer to get the structural changes the team desired done, Maritimo decided to only race in Australia this year. Under pressure from the Australian teams the calendar in Australia was changed from starting in February to starting in April. This meant that all teams had ample time to have the necessary structural and safety changes to their boats done before the start of the season. Postponing the season opener and having the safety and structural changes to the boats done first, is something that Barry-Cotter strongly feels should have happened in the Class 1 World Championship as well.
“Not racing in the Class 1 World Championship this year was of course a disappointment for our crew. But if you look at the competition now in both Championships you see that Class 1 will probably have seven boats on the water, in Australia it will be six in our class. The teams entering the Austalian competition are also strong competitors. For us 2010 will also be a development year before re-entering the Class 1 World Championship in 2011. Racing against some good competition here in Australia, I think we can do some good, competitive racing and have the necessary time to develop the boat further. We will also hope to enter the Key West World Championships in November and then we will see where we stand compared to other Class 1 teams” Barry-Cotter says.
Looking ahead to the competition in 2010 in the Australian championship, Tom sees them having toughest competition from 2 teams in particular in their class. One is their sister team Simrad Maritimo offshore competing under number 15. The other team is the bright red Skater of Acme racing, competing under number 441. ‘We aim to win’ Barry Cotter says ‘and those two teams as well as the others in competition are going to push us to our limits. This will help us be on our toes and develop the boat for the 2011 season when we hope to come back to the Class 1 World Championship, stronger than ever’.
To see where the Maritimo team is headed this year, keep following their exploits in the Australian Class one Championship here on PowerboatPro.
Pictures courtesy of Tom Barry-Cotter
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