Phil Robertson has said he is ‘furious’ with the league after technical problems prevented Canada from racing on the opening day of Sydney.
The Canadians began the first race of the day but languished at the back of the fleet, dead in the water. The Tech Team attempted to solve the issue on the water but Canada could not begin the second two fleet races, leaving them with just one point at the end of the day.
Reflecting on the day after racing, driver Phil Robertson said the issue was still unclear. “Near the start of the first race, we started to lose some of the hydraulic functions on the boat, then we started to lose foil functions, then wing functions until nothing was working.”
He admitted that he was ‘furious with the league’ for providing no redress.
“You come here promised a boat to race with and when you don’t get a boat that’s race-ready, it does piss you off.” He added that ‘questions need to be asked’ and ‘someone has to be to blame’.
“When you’re on the receiving end of a pretty crappy day like that, you really start to ask questions about how they score these races - there have to be some ramifications.”
Canada was testing the in-development T-Foils on Thursday, which Robertson said might have contributed to the F50 failure when racing got underway.
“They’ve picked our boat to test the T-Foils on, which is fun - but maybe it’s got something to do with it,” he said. “It runs a different system on the boat.”
The KPMG Australia Sail Grand Prix | Sydney resumes on February 24, with racing from 16:00 AEDT.
