“It’s probably part of the equation, but it’s way more complicated than this, so I don’t want to say too much,” he said.
SailGP announced the split fleet on Sunday morning, writing: “The decision has been taken with stronger wind conditions forecast for Sunday – on the tight, stadium-style racetrack. Following Saturday’s on-water incident involving New Zealand and France, 11 F50s will compete on Sunday.”
“The format is designed to support competitive racing on a tight course, while maintaining SailGP’s high-performance standards and broadcast delivery. Splitting the fleet reduces congestion at certain places in the course, especially at the bottom mark.”
Footage of the French catamaran colliding with the New Zealand boat.Credit: SailGP
There are plans in place to make a split fleet permanent once a 14th catamaran is added next year.
“We want to expand to 20 teams,” SailGP founder and chief executive Russell Coutts said on Friday. “Next year, team 14 will enter the game and that [team’s] already been sold. So we’ll go to a split fleet of seven and seven and the top four teams will then go through to the final of each event.”
Australia will race in group B on Sunday, based on standings from day one. France and New Zealand were sorted into Group A but neither will race due to the substantial damage caused by the collision. The top three teams of each group will ascend to a winner-takes-all final.
Australian driver Tom Slingsby said the crash on Saturday was the worst he’d seen in the six seasons of SailGP. Still, on Sunday morning felt Australia was disadvantaged by the fleet split.
“It is what it is,” he said during an interview with social media. “The way the fleets were split unfortunately, the way the points work… New Zealand and France get included in the split, and it might bias the fleet a bit. It looks like we’ve got a pretty stacked fleet, I’ve got to say. And in the other fleet, the two top teams being New Zealand and France are unable to race so that fleet has got a nice position.
“But that’s alright, if you want to win you’ve got to beat the best teams. So we’ve just got to take that on.”
Australia enter day two in second place after winning the first of the two completed races on Saturday.
This masthead travelled to Auckland as a guest of SailGP.
