Reflecting on that ahead of this weekend’s event in Sydney, driver Peter Burling told the Herald even Ryan was surprised by the usual prep time teams get on race week.
“It’s really just straight in, very short warmup, trying to get a lot of things done in that warmup before you have to compete,” Burling said. “It’s kind of a lot more quickfire in that regard, which hopefully they can take a few tidbits off the processes we’ve tried to implement there.
“It’s just cool to see the overlap of how many similarities we face to what they face and how a lot of the systems and processes we have are actually relatively similar.”
As for what sort of knowledge was shared between the team and Ryan, Burling said it was more around the structure of the week and trying to find balance.
“Definitely it’s not around driving an F50. I wouldn’t be giving him advice on how to pack a scrum or anything like that,” Burling quipped.
“It’s more around how you operate efficiently during the weekend, how you make the most of your time, how you manage your fatigue, how you structure efficient meetings – we face a lot of the same battles where everyone is trying to juggle fatigue versus preparation and how to make sure you hit the weekend in a really good headspace.”
The Black Foils will look to do so when they return to the water in Sydney this weekend looking to improve after finishing fourth in the event in Auckland. A solid result on the season table, it was a disappointing finish for the Kiwis, who are used to contesting for podium positions – particularly for their home event with a win and a second place in the two editions in Christchurch.
the Kiwis picked up just one race win for the weekend, struggling with starts and having to navigate their way through some technical issues on-board through the second day of racing.
While the Black Foils are guaranteed the opportunity to bounce back from the issues they faced in Auckland, Burling himself was open to redemption against Kiwi Formula One Red Bull Racing driver Liam Lawson somewhere down the track.
Lawson was in town during the Auckland regatta and, with the USA and Italian teams having links with Red Bull, visited the tech site at Wynyard Quarter.
During his visit, Lawson took part in a grinding challenge against some SailGP athletes – beating Burling.
“Mate, I feel like I got absolutely stitched up in this grinding challenge.
“The test they put me on had absolutely no load for about a minute ... happy for a retrial at any time.”
The Black Foils’ fourth-place result saw them remain the equal season leader on points after two events – though, with a better result at the most recent event, Great Britain took over the top spot on the leaderboard.
They weren’t the only team to experience issues over the course of the weekend, and Burling said that came with the territory of their first windy event of the season – with history indicating Sydney is likely to be their second.
“Obviously [with] the T-Foils, everyone having a slightly longer buildup than normal is actually normally a really good thing for reliability, but for some reason, we had a few things creeping in at the end of the week with one sensor in the wing having a few issues and then one panel on the boat having a few issues. It’s frustrating.
“It’s something that we really rely on SailGP for, getting that right and having the right cadence on changing equipment etc, which traditionally they’ve done a really good job at.
“It’s something I’m sure the tech team will be going over their processes and trying to figure out how to make sure that that doesn’t happen for the next event. I mean, if you looked at the weekend as a whole, there are a few flight controllers that took some pretty big knocks on the leeward side with that being the reason the Canadians had to sit out and obviously the Italians were pretty lucky that the French were sitting there not racing so they could borrow their flight control for the weekend.
“I think it just comes with those windy events that everyone’s kind of back in that relearning phase as soon as you get into that part of the end of the sport.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.
