The Emirates Great Britain SailGP Team is preparing for an action-packed weekend of racing at the France Sail Grand Prix in Saint-Tropez.
Driver and CEO Sir Ben Ainslie said it was “great to be back on European waters” after starting Season 4 with two US events. Emirates GBR will be hoping for similar conditions to the first day of racing last year in Saint-Tropez, when two SailGP speed records were broken.
Speaking at the press conference ahead of racing on Saturday and Sunday, Ainslie described Emirates GBR as “a fantastic team with a huge amount of talent” and said “as always in SailGP, the race starts will be critical” to success.
Practice racing took place on Friday afternoon, when there was a dramatic capsize of the US Team’s F50. The lighter conditions in Saint-Tropez led to the boats being fitted with the largest 29cm wing and light air foil configuration to compensate, but just before the third race there was a sudden gust that caused the US Team’s F50 to topple over.
The Switzerland Team was also caught off-guard by the gust and came close to capsizing too, before both teams retired from the third race, Driver and CEO Sir Ben Ainslie described it as “an up and down day” for Emirates GBR.
“There’s some good bits to take away and a few things we were struggling with,” he said. “We will go away and look at the data on the Oracle Cloud and Robbie Wilson our coach will no doubt have some words of wisdom for us to up our game for racing tomorrow.”
Speaking about the US Team’s capsize, Ainslie said: “We did get a big gust that came through kind of unexpectedly. The good thing was they were able to ride the boat and there wasn’t too much damage.”
After an eventful day on the Côte d'Azur water, all 10 SailGP Teams will be focusing on preparing for the first official race day which takes place on Saturday afternoon. Viewers in the UK can watch all the action live from 12:30 on ITVX.
