Technical Issues Force Early Finish On Day 1 In Sydney

Damage to the Black Foils F50’s rudder control system sustained during the final run of race three of Day 1 of the KPMG Australia Sail Grand Prix forced the team to retire from the final race of the day in Sydney.

The team had been moving up the fleet late in race three before a nose dive that damaged the rudder control system then saw them cross the line last with the boat unable to foil.

After starting the final fleet race of the day following attempts to fix the issue between races, SailGP’s Tech Team requested that the team pull out of the race once it was underway.

Black Foils CEO and Driver Peter Burling said it was a challenging day for the team.

“A really tough day for us. I felt we were right in the hunt in those first couple of races but just made a few too many mistakes. It will be really interesting to go back and look at the data. We were really struggling just to get nice and stable, unfortunately it was a big nose dive and one of the boat’s systems shut down, so it meant we couldn't foil at the end of that race (race three) and then were asked by the Tech Team to stop in the last one.”

Burling believed the issue would be able to be fixed overnight.

“We don’t believe there was any structural damage and that it was either an electrical or hydraulic issue with one of our rudders being jammed at its extreme range with no control on the boat.

“We're definitely hopeful that there's three fleet races tomorrow. We felt like we were starting to sail the boat really nicely in that third race but then a mistake was made and we couldn’t recover from there. We are excited to give it another crack tomorrow.”

SailGP’s Tech Team is now working on resolving the issues before tomorrow’s racing.

Prior to the issue in race three the team battled through the first two fleet races of the day with an eighth placed finish in the opening race before advancing to seventh in the second.

Day one’s results mean the Black Foils sit in ninth place on the leaderboard in Sydney with 7 points.

KPMG Australia Sail Grand Prix | Sydney - DAY ONE LEADERBOARD

Australia - 37 points

Emirates Great Britain - 32

France - 27

Switzerland - 26

Rockwool Denmark - 24

Spain - 21

Canada - 20

Red Bull Italy - 8

New Zealand Black Foils - 7

Mubadala Brazil - 0

Germany Deutsche Bank - -22

The KPMG Australia Sail Grand Prix continues tomorrow with racing starting at 5pm NZT. All the action will be live in New Zealand on ThreeNow.

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