Tom Slingsby and the Australia team took the final race win for overall victory at the KPMG Australia Sail Grand Prix in Sydney, Australia.
After two final fleet races,the grand final the winner-takes-all Final Podium Race was between Australia, New Zealand – driven by Nathan Outteridge, standing in for Peter Burling – and Nicolai Sehested’s ROCKWOOL Denmark.
With all three teams highly motivated for the win; Slingsby his first event win of the season, Sehested his first ever SailGP event win, and Outteridge wanting to win for the Kiwi’s, all three-teams fought hard to get the best start.
It looked like this would go to Outteridge as Slingsby held Sehested out but both teams mistimed their final run to the startline and ended up over the line early.
This left the Danes out in front and leading at the first mark with both New Zealand and Australia picking up a penalty and having to slow down to get behind them.
An early split between Denmark and Australia allowed Slingsby to get back in the race and despite Sehested gaining to within a boat length right before the final mark, it was the Aussies who crossed the line first, much to the delight of the cheering home crowd.
Slingsby said: “To win after coming so close so many times and in front of our home crowd of Sydney with our family and friends watching, it really doesn’t get much better than this.”
Emirates GBR finished the Australian event overall 7th, with a race score of 9, 6, 7, 6, 5, and are now 6th on the overall season 4 leaderboard.
GBR Driver Giles Scott, who recently took over from Ben Ainslie, still has a lot to do to get the British team back in the mix, their poor starting putting them on the back-foot, although they showed bursts of speed as the event progressed.
Scott said: “With me coming into the Driver role, I’ve got to get up to speed quickly and the crew have got to adjust to my way of sailing – but hopefully we are on a steep learning curve.”
“This event feels like a nice building block ahead of Christchurch next month, hopefully our trajectory can be fast and steep.”
With just four events remaining until the Season 4 Grand Final in San Francisco on July 13-14 – where US$2 million is on the line – there is still all to play with only seven points separating third and seventh positions.
SailGP travels to Christchurch next, where racing will take place on 23 and 24 March.
KPMG AUSTRALIA SAIL GRAND PRIX I SYDNEY STANDINGS
1 // Australia 10 points
2 // ROCKWOOL Denmark 9 points
3 // New Zealand 8 points
4 // France 7 points
5 // Spain 6 points
6 // Germany 5 points
7 // Emirates Great Britain 4 points
8 // Switzerland 3 points
9 // USA 2 points
10 // Canada 1 point
OVERALL SAILGP SEASON 4 STANDINGS (after eight events) //
1 // Australia 66 points
2 // New Zealand 58 points
3 // ROCKWOOL Denmark 52 points
4 // Spain 48 points
5 // France 45 points
6 // Emirates GBR 45 points
7 // USA 45 points
8 // Canada 38 points
9 // Germany 21 points
10 // Switzerland 17 points
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