U.S. SailGP Team looks ahead to pivotal September racing
COPENHAGEN, Denmark, Aug. 20, 2022 – Despite the Americans second-place finish in the first race today at the ROCKWOOL Sail Grand Prix | Denmark, the United States SailGP Team missed capitalizing on key opportunities and finished in fifth place overall. “We could have done better for sure,” says Jimmy Spithill, U.S. SailGP Team’s CEO and Driver.
“Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to put three good races together,” Spithill continues. “We had one good race, and made good recoveries in the others but we still need the entire package, and that’s on all of us. It’s not one area in the team; we all still need to make improvements.”
Tactician Andrew Campbell agrees, saying that while the team did a much better job playing offense rather than defense on the race course, they didn’t execute all the maneuvers they needed to. “We missed a couple of critical moments that would have paid big gains,” Campbell says. “We probably gave away six or seven points that would have put us in the finals for sure.”
Campbell and the team are frustrated, but optimistically so, “If that makes any sense. It’s only frustrating because we know we are capable of being there and making those gains. We are really close to breaking this thing open again and getting on the podium. We know we are a player in this fleet.”
While the American team appears to be on the precipice of turning its season around, the saving grace may be that anything can – and does – happen in SailGP. From Great Britain missing this weekend due to its damaged F50 and dropping in the overall results from second to fifth place, to the two-time SailGP champion Australian team missing qualifying for the final race, Spithill reminds us that, “Anything can happen.”
Now a quarter of the way through Season 3, this creates much-needed opportunities for the U.S. SailGP Team to get back into podium contention, beginning with the next two SailGP events in quick succession (Sept. 10 - 11 is France Sail Grand Prix, and Sept. 24 - 25 is Spain Sail Grand Prix).
