SailGP – Ainslie returns after ‘silly, basic mistake’ for France Sail Grand Prix

The up-coming SailGP event – the Range Rover France Sail Grand Prix – in Saint-Tropez will see Ben Ainslie’s team back on the water.

Following a disastrous unforced error in Copenhagen where Ainslie’s Great Britain team hit a rock while travelling at 10 knots, causing significant damage to the boat, and ruling the team out of the racing.

Missing that event saw the British team drop from second to fifth on the championship leaderboard, where they are now ten points behind overall leader Australia.

SailGP pundit Stevie Morrison claimed that the next two events in Saint-Tropez and Cadiz, which together mark the half-way point in Season 3’s 11-event calendar, would prove ‘defining’.

He described the team running aground in practice as ‘a silly, basic mistake’. “That was a disaster and you’d argue it was a big embarrassing, so they really need to turn it around and get some results going their way,” he said.

Compared with some of the shenanigans going on in the Formula 1 grand prix ciruit, Ainslie’s unforced error seems a fairly mild set-back, with just six points separating the British from second placed New Zealand . . . What would Lewis Hamilton give for such a small deficit?

While no doubt the SailGP presenters would like more aggressive and risk-taking racing in Saint-Tropez, particularly in the three-boat Final race, the present format does not lend itself to close quarter tactics. And Ainslie in particular has been criticised for his aggressive attitude to racing . . . an attitude that has won him multi Olympic and World titles.

Perhaps some ‘pit-stops’ and a ‘virtual safety boat’ are needed to add the element of serendipity to the racing.

It is noticeable how the light weather races are often more interesting than the normal condition races where the start is all pervasive and the racing becomes a follow-the-leader event after the first corner.

In the light weather the foiling – non foiling lottery introduces some of the unexpected that a switch of tyres does in F1 . . . as Hamilton suffered at Zandvoort on Sunday!