America’s Cup 2021: INEOS Team UK admits ‘having trouble’ in practice races

Sir Ben Ainslie has admitted to a major disadvantage with INEOS Team UK’s AC75 Britannia, saying that the boat struggles with lighter winds.

British entries to the America’s Cup were conspicuously absent during many of the practice sessions over the past week and had their fights in the water. His performances, or lack of them, saw his ship labeled “lame duck” by a British expert.

Speaking ahead of the America’s Cup World Series, which starts tomorrow, Ainslie said there were definitely some areas to work on, but the criticism they had been getting was “like water on a duck’s back.

“I think it’s clear to everyone to see that we are struggling a bit in the lighter airs with the takeoff and some of the maneuvering,” Ainslie said.

“But this is a new class of boat; it is a development class and in the America’s Cup you can see that as the teams go through the series, they get better and better. For us, in that area, we have a little bit of catch up to do.

“Together we have to solve our problems in terms of our top-level performance, but we have a fantastic team. We have some brilliant designers, engineers, ground crew and if anyone can solve those problems, I think it’s our team, so that’s it. Our focus “.

But while the ship has been struggling with milder winds, Ainslie said they had experience sailing through some “pretty windy days” in recent months and were confident how it would perform in the strongest conditions.

The team has been working on the sheds for the past few days making changes, many of which were internal, in preparation for sailing in this week’s race, however Ainslie was not in a position to share that information.

The America’s Cup World Series regatta, which runs Thursday through Sunday, provides teams with the opportunity to address these initial issues in a race format, being the first and only competitive racing opportunity before the series of Prada Cup challenges early next year.

Therefore, while teams expect a good performance in races, the event doubles as an opportunity for further development, which is a more important aspect in the long run.

However, to the delight of the Ainslie team, a decent breeze is expected on at least the first two days of this week’s regatta, with race director Iain Murray indicating that heading C, between North Head and Bastian Point, it would be worn on opening day. . However, that would be confirmed the morning of the race.

“It will be interesting tomorrow,” Ainslie said. “The breeze should be a little stronger so it will be interesting to see how the performances compare.”