Switzerland driver Sebastien Schneiter has opened up about the team’s ‘frustrating’ event in Cádiz, which saw the team finish last overall.
The Swiss picked up a 10-8-4-10-9 race record after going to battle against the 10-strong F50 fleet in five fleet races, and was beaten by Season 4’s newcomer team Germany for the second time.
Reflecting on the result, Schneiter said the team ‘is making a lot of progress’ behind the scenes but ‘struggles to show it on race day’.
While the team is ‘working really well together’, he admitted it’s still ‘missing a little something’. “I feel like we’re getting closer,” he added.
It comes after the Swiss team came under criticism from SailGP commentators, who said the pressure is mounting on Schneiter’s team to deliver results.
Stevie Morrison said he was ‘underwhelmed’ by the team’s performance in Cádiz. “They’ve been in there quite a long time now, a similar amount of time to the new Spanish and French line-ups, and you just feel like they’re running out of time for excuses,” he said.
The racing data from Cádiz shows that Switzerland failed to top any metric, with the team consistently falling into the second half of the fleet across distance sailed, average boat speed, Mark 1 position and maneuvers. In fact, the only metrics where Switzerland produced solid numbers was in flight control.
The team picked up a 61.7% fly time in Cádiz - the sixth highest in the fleet - and the third highest ride height - 684.8 mm.
Looking ahead, Schneiter said the team has a ‘real opportunity’ ahead of Dubai to ‘look at the data and see how we can improve as a team’.
“The goal for the team in Dubai is just to have a little switch that we haven’t found yet,” he said. “We know we have the potential so the goal for Dubai is to use the extra training days we’ve got there and come out firing during the event.”
The F50 fleet will next meet at the Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix presented by P&O Marinas on December 9-10.
