Erik Heil’s newcomer German team, which joined the league at the beginning of Season 4, impressed on its debut.
Despite finishing last in both Chicago and Los Angeles, the team is frequently competing mid-fleet and would have ended LA level on points with Switzerland if it hadn’t received a painful penalty for a collision.
Data provided from the 10-strong F50 fleet from LA shows that Heil’s team is out-performing established SailGP teams across key metrics, including maneuvers and average fleet race distance.
Germany executed a total of 60 maneuvers in LA’s fleet racing, while New Zealand, France, Australia, Emirates GBR, Switzerland, ROCKWOOL Denmark and Canada all performed more. Quentin Delapierre’s France carried out the most amount of maneuvers (67), while event winners Spain carried out the least (55).
When it came to average distance covered in fleet racing, Germany averaged at 8,587m per race - less distance than Switzerland’s (8,724m) and even with Emirates GBR (8,568m). Spain came top of this metric too - covering an average distance of 8,120m.
Average Mark 1 rankings also saw the Germans feature mid fleet, beating New Zealand (7.1) and Switzerland and France (7) with an average ranking of 6.6. While the team’s average fishing position slipped to 8.2, it still beat Switzerland’s 8.6.
However, Heil’s team also featured at the bottom of some metrics, including average foil height (0.23m) and foiling percentage (57.05%). Conversely, Australia had the highest foil height (0.36m) while ROCKWOOL Denmark had the highest foiling percentage (67.28%).
When it came to teams’ top speeds, Germany had the lowest - 63.42 km/h, while Phil Robertson’s Canada had the highest - 76.91 km/h.
Germany also had the slowest starting speed - 24.1 km/h and was once again eclipsed by Canada, which had the highest starting speed of the fleet - 32.3 km/h. However, Germany beat both France and Switzerland on starting positioning - with Germany positioned an average of 27.9m from the line at the gun, compared with France’s 31.7m and Switzerland’s 47.1m.
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