Australia driver Tom Slingsby has debriefed a ‘tough’ event in New York, which saw the team narrowly miss out on a place in the Final while fierce rivals New Zealand clinched their 5th victory of the season.
Tricky conditions and technical problems for the ‘fifth event in a row’ saw the team pick up mixed 3-6-9-1 race results, finishing 4th overall.
Despite the turbulent performance, the Aussies regained second place on the overall Season 4 leaderboard after dropping to third in Halifax. Slingsby’s team now has 78 points - two ahead of Spain in third, while New Zealand has already qualified for next month’s Season 4 Grand Final with 93 points.
Reflecting on the event, Slingsby said he had hoped to 'gain momentum’ ahead of San Francisco but lost out to the Kiwis.
“It would have been nice to make another three boat Final,” he said. “Obviously New Zealand’s made a lot this year and we haven’t really made that many, so they’re going to be sharper in that regard.”
Australia has made it into more Finals this season than any other team - a total of eight, but converted just one into an event title (Sydney). New Zealand meanwhile has made it into seven Finals and won five - Chicago, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Christchurch and New York.
Despite this, Slingsby admitted the final event rankings in New York ‘worked out pretty well’ for the Australian team. “We won the last race, jumped four places, and a couple of our close rivals didn’t have a good race - it worked out well for us.”
As a result, the Aussies left New York with ‘a good result’ they ‘might not have deserved’, Slingsby said.
Looking ahead to Season 4’s $2 million Grand Final next month, Slingsby said the team would be drawing confidence on its unbeaten record in San Francisco - having won three season showdowns in the same venue.
“Obviously you’d love to go into San Francisco having won multiple events - we have done in the past, but this will be different,” he said. “But we’ve never been beaten in San Francisco, we had a lot of success there, so we’ve got to take confidence out of that.”
The Season 4 Grand Final | San Francisco takes place on July 13-14.
