The performances of Australia, Great Britain and Canada in the T-Mobile U.S. Sail Grand Prix Final have been put under the microscope, revealing that Australia sailed both the fastest and the shortest distance.
The second day of racing saw lighter wind conditions, resulting in the F50s being fitted with the largest 29m wing and the racecourse moved beyond Chicago’s harbour wall. A shorter course of just five legs was also put in place to compensate for the light winds.
Tom Slingsby’s Australia, who scraped into the Final after inconsistent fleet racing, executed the best race start. The team was travelling at 55.3 km/h, over 10 km/h faster than runner up Canada, and was just 0.6m from the line when the starting gun sounded, according to SailGP Insights.
Ben Ainslie’s Great Britain were closer to the starting line when the race began, just 0.3m away, but they were travelling at a slower speed of 46.1 km/h. Phil Robertson’s Canada meanwhile was 1.8m from the line and travelling at 44.6 km/h.
On the all important first leg down to mark one, Australia picked up the highest average speed of 62.2 km/h, ahead of Great Britain (57.4 km/h) and Canada (58.7 km/h).
Despite the light conditions, Australia and Great Britain foiled for 99% of the race while Canada was just below with 97%.
Ben Ainslie’s team executed a faster start than Canada, and picked up a higher fly time.
But they also performed 7 manoeuvres - two more than both Canada and Australia. Ben Ainslie’s team also sailed further than their competitors - a total of 6,207m, while Canada sailed 5,925m and Australia sailed 5,797m.
Australia picked up the highest average speed and the highest top speed - 53.7 km/h and 65.6 km/h respectively. Great Britain had the second highest average speed - 53.6 km/h and a top speed of 63.5 km/h while Canada had an average speed of 52.7 km/h and a top speed of 63.8 km/h.
Powered by Oracle, SailGP Insights is an online dashboard which provides fans with huge amounts of data from our cutting-edge racing F50 catamarans.
