New Zealand driver Peter Burling has given his post-race rundown of Dubai’s nail-biting finale, admitting it was ‘anyone’s game’ as the Kiwis, Canada and Australia rounded the final mark.
A last minute penalty on Canada denied Phil Robertson’s team the win, despite them crossing the finish line first, meaning it was between old rivals Australia and New Zealand to get the win.
Speaking about the crucial final mark rounding, which saw all three boats come together, Burling said: “We were obviously just focused on giving everyone as much space as we could on the outside.
"We had a hard lock on the boat for about 20 seconds trying to make that turn, so it was an amazing job by the crew to pull off a good last jibe and give ourselves a shot.”
As New Zealand ‘foiled into the bottom mark, it was anyone’s game,’ he added.
The result means that New Zealand regains a place on the podium of the Championship leaderboard, now sitting 3rd and just one point behind ROCKWOOL DEN. It comes after a tricky period for the Kiwis, who experienced a dramatic wing failure at the end of the first day of Saint-Tropez - meaning they had to miss the second half of the event and the whole of Taranto.
“As a team we really feel we lost two events (…) and it’s really hard to get back into the league - it’s really getting the consistency back that’s really hard, so for us it’s really about building now and pushing towards the right end of the leaderboard.”
The 10-strong F50 fleet will next meet when SailGP visits Abu Dhabi for the first time on January 13-14.
