Being part of a racing team is no ordinary job for a 21-year-old – but Invicta Racing’s Jake Puttock is not your ordinary 21-year-old.

By Martin Lloyd

Today, Puttock flies around the world with one of F2’s top teams, working on cars that take drivers to victories and podiums annually. But the British mechanic’s F2 journey began about four years ago in a conventional pandemic-era setting: sat at home in front of his games console, playing online football.

“I used to be a massive FIFA player,” Puttock told Feeder Series. “So I was playing FUT Champions, just chilling, sweating as we all do on the weekend. And then I got a call from Paul [Devlin, one of Invicta’s three team owners]. And I was like, oh, I’m gonna have to leave this game. This could be serious.

“So I left that and answered the phone. And he said, ‘Get yourself a COVID test. Then you can come and do two days of work experience.’”

Puttock was a student at the National College for Motorsport in Silverstone at the time. He had been pestering Invicta, then called Virtuosi, for an opportunity since before the COVID-19 pandemic, but it was only when restrictions eased that he was able to join the Norfolk-based team.

After his first session, Puttock was invited back for further work experience, which led to his first on-track experience at the 2021 pre-season test in Bahrain.

“I’d never been out of the country,” Puttock said. “Being asked to go to Bahrain with a bunch of guys who I still don’t really know, it was pretty daunting.

“You have no idea what’s going on. You just have to learn on the spot. A year went by doing college at Silverstone and being there [at Invicta] when I could, and then I got offered a full-time job. And the rest is history.”

Puttock is now nearing the end of his fourth season with Invicta. He mans the rear jack during pit stops and helps maintain and repair the cars between sessions and race weekends.

He summarised his role in one high-pressure moment from four weeks ago, when Invicta driver Gabriel Bortoleto, a championship contender, bounced across the gravel exiting the first Lesmo in qualifying at Monza.

“What he’d damaged, it was a bit of a painstaking job to fix. It was all on the floor,” Puttock said. At the team’s workshop, he is responsible for flooring and carbon repairs.

“Gravel just destroys carbon. It just rips it apart. So the underside of the floor was just annihilated, it was all scratched everywhere. You can fix it, you can glue it, but to the extent that it was, you couldn’t,” he added. “And obviously you can’t run like that because it’s affecting the aero on the underside of the car.”

Invicta made the necessary fixes, and the next day, he charged through the grid to take a joint eighth place with Dennis Hauger, who crossed the line at the same time as Bortoleto did. They split the final point in F2’s first-ever tied finish.

Bortoleto made history the next day with a supreme recovery drive in the feature race on Sunday that forced the F1 paddock to take notice. No driver had ever won from last on the grid in F2, and while Bortoleto was lucky with the timing of a mid-race safety car, Puttock asserted that the Brazilian had the pace to match.

“Gabi was lucky with the safety car, but that’s racing,” Puttock said. “We had the pace. If qualifying did go our way, we’d have won that race easily. So I think it was a well-deserved win from our side.

“And obviously that chucks us back into championship contention for the drivers’ and we’re leading the teams’ [championship].”

Bortoleto’s win gave Invicta a 20.5-point lead in the championship after Monza. Invicta now hold a 35.5-point lead, while Bortoleto’s fifth- and fourth-place finishes in Baku gave him a 4.5-point advantage over Isack Hadjar. The team could win their first title since 2017, when the Virtuosi-run Russian Time outfit narrowly secured the crown.

Puttock and Bortoleto are 21 and 19 respectively. Many in their age group are still in full-time education, not travelling the world with the F2 paddock.

When he joined Virtuosi, Puttock was just 18, making him one of the youngest people in the paddock in any capacity. Though he has since become a key member of a frontrunning F2 team, he said he had developed the most personally rather than professionally.

“It makes you grow up a lot,” he said about his job. “Because at the end of the day, you’re going from being at college with all your mates to being surrounded by adults who’ve done it for years and years.”

Still, Puttock feels that similarities in age and off-track interests between him and the team’s drivers helped him build relationships with them.

“I used to be fairly into my sim [racing] stuff on a decent level,” Puttock said. “So was Gabi. I was actually racing against Gabi [on iRacing] before he signed with us. I was bashing into him wheel to wheel and giving him some hard times in racing!

“[When] I introduced myself, I was like, ‘Oh, Gabi … I race against you’ and he’s like, ‘Oh, no way!’ So then we started doing a few more sim sessions. It’s cool having that relaxed connection with them.”

Most of the drivers in the F2 paddock are eyeing F1 careers. And while some mechanics likewise aspire to graduate, Puttock has his sights set on a different category of racing if he leaves F2 one day.

“I’ve always liked the idea of endurance racing,” he said. “I’m a massive fan of WEC, IMSA, ELMS, that type of stuff.

“I wouldn’t mind doing F1 to say that I’ve done it, that I’ve been to the peak of what you can be in racing. But I think for me, I’d rather go and do WEC. I think our racing is cool, but over the space of, say, a six-hour race or something like that, so much can change. You can be out of contention one minute, straight back in another.”

Header photo credit: Josh Latham