SailGP: In light weather, the Chicago Kiwis win, and the Blues limit damage
SailGP in Chicago
The F50s are glued to the fresh waters of Lake Michigan in Chicago, and we weren’t used to seeing that. After “normal” fly mode races on Friday, the second day’s race turned into a snail race.
It took a failed race for the Blues to understand that by playing up and down the chips, even in very light weather, we can go faster.
In the end, Peter Burling’s Kiwis won the first competition of Season 4, and took a little revenge on the Grand Final in San Francisco won by the Australians, finishing second in this Grand Prix.
On the French* side, the results are mixed: there were some good ones (two third places) with three good starts but also not at all good ones with seventh, ninth and ninth again.
The next meeting is in Los Angeles on July 22-23.
: Quentin Delapierre, Mile Frascari, Kevin Bibonnet, Mathieu Van Damme
CHICAGO GP RANKING
1 New Zealand (Peter Burling) 10p
2 Australia (Tom Slingsby), 9 points
3 Canada (Phil Robertson), 8 points
4 Denmark (Nicolai Sehested) 7 points
5 Spain Diego Botín) 6 points
6 France (Quentin Delapierre) 5 points
7 Great Britain (Ben Ainslie) 4 points
8 Switzerland Sebastian Schneiter) 3 points
9 USA (Jamie Spithell), 2 points
The New Zealanders’ first win of the season. (Photo by Ricardo Pinto)
words Quentin DeLapierre:
“We did some good things: half of our starts weren’t too bad, but two were also pretty bad. We’ll say the Chicago Grand Prix is a bit like this. This is only the first of the season. We have great ambitions in every performance sector.” And inevitably, there are points that we have to work a lot on. Because it’s the beginning, we can accept it. I’m still convinced that in some time, we’ll go up a notch because everyone’s focused on it. What we want this year is to be able to fly as high and stable as the Australians and New Zealanders. We want Also to try to have the same style of organization on the wing.And we keep making the same good starts as last season because in terms of stats we are one of the best teams.But you have to manage to do those three things at the same time, and obviously it’s not easy.But we have The right keys and the right tools to move forward.”
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