The Luna Rossa Principle team of : Peter Burling, Ruggero Tita, Umberto Molinris and Vittorio Bissaro completed a 33sec win over Emirates Team New Zealand in the Final match race to claim overall victory at the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup – Preliminary Regatta Sardinia.
The match race followed two final fleet races which saw the Luna Ross Women & Youth team, who had led over six fleet races, dramatically suffered a disqualification and a seventh place Sunday to drop out of contention for the match race final.
Burling took a second place and a final fleet race win to put the Italy’s Luna Rossa Principle team at the top of the leaderboard.
While Nathan Outteridge, sailing with Seb Menzies, Andy Maloney and Iain Jensen took fourth and fifth places to put ETNZ in second overall and challenge the Italians in the winner-takes-all Final match race.
As always in match racing the start is critical and so it was in Cagliari. Outteridge sailing along the line with Burling behind ran out of ‘runway’ and hit the start line a fraction early allowing Burling to cross cleanly, and jump to an immediate 100 metre lead.
Burling then applied a classic cover on ETNZ, taking Luna Rossa to a 13 sec lead at the first Gate, and building the lead to near 400 metres before a splashdown just before Gate 4 gave the Kiwi team some hope.
But Luna Rossa quickly recovered and had a 25 sec lead at Gate 5 for the final downwind sprint to the Finish. Crossing the line with a 33 second win to take overall victory at the AC38 Preliminary Regatta Sardinia.
