Australia places 3rd in Podium Final and remain in second position of the Season 4 leaderboard.
BERMUDA – 05 May 2024 – The Spain SailGP Team has taken out the ‘top dogs’ of Season 4- Australia and New Zealand- to win the Apex Bermuda Sail Grand Prix, with the Australian’s not able to secure their fairytale comeback with potential tech issues plaguing the team.
The neck-and-neck qualifying fleet races saw multiple lead changes of which third team would secure a seat in the final against Australia and Spain, with New Zealand the ‘Black Foils’ coming from the back of the pack in the fifth fleet race to snake Canada’s spot in the Podium Final.
Whilst the Australian’s dominant performance during the weekend had them as the favourites going into the final, the team battled with unexpected tech issues during the Super Sunday of racing, which Slingsby believes did hamper the team’s ability on the race track.
Tom Slingsby said, “I do think there were some settings that were changed overnight somehow. Not to take away from Spain’s win, they nailed that last start and were the best team. We had issues with our boards and our wind instruments were all out and on top of that we just didn’t feel like we had boat speed.
“We’ve got to go back and look at the data and figure out if we were doing something wrong or if our boat configuration settings were wrong. It’s amazing how different the boat felt today compared to yesterday, so there is alot for us to dive into and look at.”
Spain slingshot ahead of Australia and New Zealand at the start line of the Podium Final to secure a confident lead to take the win, with New Zealand following in second place and Australia in third.
Slingsby said, “We are happy to get a podium finish in our first event back after Christchurch. But if you think we are happy to say end the season in third place overall, I can tell you that’s not correct. We’ve got a lot of work to do to catch the Kiwis but we embrace that challenge.”
Despite the Aussies not being able to lift the Bermuda championship wheel this weekend, their solid performance and podium finish this weekend has allowed them to maintain their second position in the Season 4 leaderboard, 10 points behind their Kiwi rivals.
The league will now head to Canada for the ROCKWOOL Canada Sail Grand Prix I Hallifax on June 1-2, which marks the eleventh stop of the global racing league. From there, only one event remains, before all team’s meet and battle for a seat in the highly anticipated Season 4 Grand Final in San Francisco on July 13-14.
On the team’s preparation for the Grand Final, Slingsby said, “I am just fully focused on us getting to the point where we can go out and know we can execute consistently and most of that is on me with nailing starts and having my tactics on point. As a team we need to try to raise our performance to another level.”
SEASON 4 LEADERBOARD//
- New Zealand- 77 points
- Australia- 67 points
- Spain- 65 points
- ROCKWOOL Denmark- 56 points
- France- 56 points
- Canada- 53 points
- USA- 49 points
- Emirates Great Britain- 48 points
- Germany- 32 points
- Switzerland- 26 points
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