Tom Barry-Cotter on 2 dollar equipment, the AUS 1 jinx and racing AOPC 525 Class.
We caught up with Tom after the two North Queensland races in Mackay and Townsville of the AOPC Class 1 Tom is racing together with his team mate Pal Virik Nilsen from Norway. Despite Tom’s positive feeling about the new all Maritimo boat racing under the Mustang name, problems mounted for the team and they failed to get in a good result in either race weekend. Maritimo with Ross Willaton and Peter McGrath did better winning the weekend in Townsville after a 5 round hard fought battle with #96 Qatar. Qatar finally had to leave the battle with a broken prop shaft leaving them to end second in Townsville.
Despite their success in Townsville, Maritimo also did not manage to stay problem free during the last two racing weekends. Blowing a supercharger belt in Mackay put a DNF next to their name. So half way through the season both Maritimo teams in a tough spot. We picked up the phone and asked Tom what we could expect for the second half of the season.
Picture courtesy of Andrew Gricks photography
Tom starts out with congratulating Sheikh Hassan and Steve Curtis now being the AOPC Class 1 Championship leaders after their 1,2 scores in Mackay and Townsville. With Maritimo preparing the boat for them there is some room for celebrations there. Being at the top spot of the championships, Tom hopes it will give Sheikh Hassan and Steve the motivation to finish the season in Australia. Tom stresses Maritimo would gladly keep preparing the boat for them.
Regarding the Mustang team, Tom is clear. The new boat handles like a dream, has more speed exiting the corners and is also fast in a straight line. The results had nothing to do with the way the new boat is designed or build. Barry-Cotter says: “the past two weekends it has been 2 dollar parts that kept us from racing for good results as well as some bad luck. We had engines breaking down with no time to replace them between races, belts breaking, radio failure so that we missed the start, broken prop, an engine that would not start in gear that got us a DNS and zero points in Mackay and that about sums up our racing weekends. I was aware of the Aus 1 jinx, no team has won back to back championships with Aus 1 on the boat and now the same is happening to us. After last couple of weekends I have to say I was tempted to just put the number 11 back on. We have won back to back championships racing with that number.”
Picture courtesy EMB photographics
Tom continues: “But seriously, engine reliability will now be a top priority for both Mustang and Maritimo for the rest of the season which continues 19 September in Redcliffe, also in Queensland. So there is time to improve, check all the 2 dollar equipment that let us down last racing weekends and even to do tests. With all this going on I am glad we are not racing in the Class 1 World Championships right now because testing would in that case have been out of the question. I think we took a good decision this year to develop a new boat and race close to home and with all the competition here and #96 Qatar coming in the standard of the championship is very high. We would need a good amount of luck though to have a shot at winning the championship.”
With everything that is going on in Class 1 out of the way, Tom confides in us Maritimo is aiming to participate in the 525 Class with their own team and they will have a unique way of funding that. Tom has expressed on these pages before that he thinks 525 holds the future for powerboat racing in Australia. The boats can be run at a fraction of the budgets that are thrown around in Class 1. This is mainly due to racing with out of the box 525 engines and the boats being designed less complex. There are 525 teams that actually not lose money with their racing efforts. The way Tom sees a 525 Maritimo team being funded is as follows. Maritimo is committed to Class 1 with both the Mustang and Maritimo team. With the new all Maritimo boat coming in for Tom and Pal there is obviously the boat of last season left along with some other equipment that is not needed anymore for both remaining teams and their racing set up. Maritimo plan on selling off all the extra Class 1 equipment and funding a 525 team with that under the Maritimo name. A full listing of the Maritimo racing equipment for sale will soon be presented in the classifieds section on PowerboatPro.
Interested parties can contact Tom on purchasing Maritimo Class 1 equipment at: tombarrycotter@hotmail.com or give him a ring at: +61 407 584 179.
Article and pictures courtesy of Maritimo Racing and Tom Barry-Cotter.
For more information on Maritimo motoryachts and Maritimo Racing please visit the Maritimo website.
For more news on Mustang boats, new sponsors for Maritimo Racing, please visit the Mustang Marine website.
All information on Offshore Racing in Australia to be found at the AOPC website and the Superboat Australia website
