ROCKWOOL DEN and Emirates GBR will build on crucial ‘momentum’ gained by strong performances in San Francisco when the 2024/2025 Season gets underway, drivers Nicolai Sehested and Giles Scott have said.
The teams finished fleet racing in second and third respectively behind Australia, which topped the event standings.
ROCKWOOL DEN picked up solid 2-8-1-4-2 results, despite a collision with France in the fourth fleet race which ended the French team’s season. ROCKWOOL DEN managed to rebound from the incident to finish the race in fourth.
Driver Nicolai Sehested described the incident as ‘unfortunate’ - ‘it’s never how we want to race, or how we wanted France to leave the Championship fight’.
He added that the team ‘did everything [they] could [to avoid a collision], but ‘it was too late’. Despite the collision, Sehested said the team was ‘super happy to finish with a second place’.
“Finishing off strong gives us some momentum and something to build on in Season 5,” he said, adding that the team would be investigating why ‘the second part of the season went so badly for us’. “We need to look into that and debrief why we weren’t there when it mattered later on in the season - it’s something we need to learn from.”
Reflecting on the Emirates GBR’s 6-2-2-5-5 fleet racing results, which saw them finish the event in third overall, driver Giles Scott said the team felt ‘we left a little bit out on the water’ due to there being no event Final (the three-boat showdown instead saw Spain, Australia and New Zealand battle it out for the season championship.)
Despite that, Scott said the team is ‘in a pretty strong position’ having ‘finished in the top three’ in Halifax, New York and San Francisco.
“That’s something I think we can be super happy about and build on into next season,” he said. “Obviously we wanted more from this season, but I think we’re in a good spot.”
He added that the team has ‘momentum’ now the ‘agony of [his] apprenticeship into SailGP’ is over. “I’m ready to send it hard and keep those podiums coming.”
The 2024/2025 Season kicks off in Dubai on November November 23-24.