An equipment malfunction left the New Zealand SailGP team unable to compete in this weekend’s event in Italy. Now, a league decision on their scoring has left the team with mixed feelings.
The New Zealand team will be awarded fifth place for the Italian SailGP stop, picking up six event points, after being unable to compete because the league did not have spare parts readily available for their league-supplied equipment.
At the previous regatta, at Saint-Tropez in France this month, the New Zealand team’s 29m wing sail imploded following the first day’s racing after going out of alignment, collapsing on top of the sailors onboard. There was no spare sail on-site and the team had to pull out of the regatta with no redress to make up points they missed out on by not being able to take part in the second day.
While the league’s decision to award them fifth place for this weekend is a better outcome than the eighth-place finish they had to settle for when the incident occurred, co-chief executive and driver Peter Burling wasn’t completely satisfied with the outcome.
“It’s frustrating that, in this instance, organisers haven’t considered our performance in Chicago, Los Angeles and on day one in Saint-Tropez,” Burling said. “It means that on top of a bad result in Saint-Tropez because we weren’t able to compete on day two, we’re also now carrying a fifth heading into Cadiz and the rest of the season.