Engineer Brian Cottee, who currently contracts to the Blanchard Racing Team’s Super2 Series team, co-ordinated a makeshift local support network during race week.
Cottee explained his connection to Cadillac comes through team principal Graeme Lowdon and chief racing officer Marc Hynes, who once contested the Bathurst 1000 with Triple Eight.
“About a dozen years ago I was out catching up with a mate of mine who introduced me to them,” Cottee told Speedcafe.
“Ever since then, Hynesy has rung me up every odd year when he needs stuff and at the moment, he’s pretty high up at Cadillac.
“So they phoned me up on Wednesday morning and then I basically didn’t go to sleep until sometime Friday.”
So what does an F1 team with over 500 full-time staff and hundreds of millions of dollars at its disposal need at the 11th hour ahead of its debut?
“A lot of it was last minute suspension components and stuff like that,” said Cottee, who is essentially a one-man band with a small workshop in Carrum Downs.
“My shop was running flat out and I didn’t have the capability to do everything they needed, so I ended up outsourcing to other people as well.
“Tickford did some printing and machining through Dilan Talabani and their Tickford Engineering side, and there were a few others, like FlexiCut, which are all ex-Supercar people.”
Cottee said the relatively simple early requests snowballed as the week unfolded.
“I had 10 parts made and thought it was over, and then the requests just kept coming and coming,” he said.
“It was, ‘hey, where do you get this?’ Where can we get these bearings?’ Another one was a, ‘what about this?’, and then I’m going down to Bunnings for them.”
While a trip to Bunnings for “some garden hoses and stuff like that” stands out as perhaps the most bizarre task, not every request was as easy to resolve.
Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix starting grid
“There’s been random phone calls at night. Normally you put your phone on silent, but I’m waking up to, ‘hey, can you find some titanium?” he said.
“I’m like, ‘you know we’re in Australia, man, and it’s 11 o’clock at night, can this wait untill the morning?
“One of the problems I had was trying to get a certain type of material, but it had to be processed first by heat treating it to get it to the right tensile strength.
“Trying to find someone in the state that could heat treat it in time, it was just an absolute nightmare.
“My phone was blowing up and I relied on a few other people I knew. It became a bit of a network.”
Cottee was in the F1 paddock on Saturday as a guest of the team, ready and willing to help out with anything required.
“Basically, I’ve offered my services, if they need anything 24-7, I’ll just get it,” he said.
“They call the job ‘the fixer’. They’ve got one in their team, but then they have people on the ground at every race, in every country that they go to, such as myself that have been around long enough.”
Cadillac drivers Sergio Perez and Valtteri Bottas will start the Australian Grand Prix from 18th and 19th respectively.
