Capped off Australia, the Blues at the foot of the podium

Paul Roget, Media365: Posted on Mon May 08, 2023 at 1:56pm.

The French crew, driven by Quentin Delapierre, finished fourth at the Sail GP Final in San Francisco, which saw Australia crowned again.

And in the end, it was Australia who won… For the third time in as many editions of Sail GP, this manned competition has seen many single-design boat races, with F50-class pontoons, the victory, waiting for the Australians against New Zealand and England. And that is even if the French, despite a complicated start, didn’t deserve in San Francisco to win Sunday’s Tour 1 before failing to bottom out on the podium in the general classification of the event created by US billionaire Larry Ellison. Oracle founder and famous New Zealand navigator Russell Coates.

Delapiere: ‘We need to sail more’

Quentin Delapierre, at the helm of the French crew for a year and a half, with whom he broke the speed record at the Sail GP last September in Saint-Tropez, was generally satisfied with this stay in California, which started badly for the Blues. “I am very happy with our reaction. It was important to regroup and not end up at the bottom of the Sail Grand Prix rankings.”, he reacted on the contest website. “As a competitor, finishing fourth, inevitably, I’m not happy, it bothers me. We had access to this final but we could have been less than that. Next season should set us apart,” he explains again, before acknowledging that his team has to “move around a lot.” . Today, we face teams who sail 200 days a year when we are 45. This inevitably creates gaps.. We held on as hard as iron, but looking back, to win SailGP you have to sail further. “

Australian Tom Slingsby, who with his team got the million dollars promised to the winners, enjoyed this “incredible success. It’s been a crazy race, a crazy week, a crazy year but this win is the best, it’s all simply because we sailed like we’ve done it all year” .