Moving to second place in the season long Rolex SailGP Championship has provided a silver lining for the Black Foils after narrowly missing out to Emirates Great Britain in today’s DP World Spain Grand Prix final.
Sitting third heading into Sunday’s racing in Cadiz the Black Foils accumulated enough points across the tightly contested final fleet races of the day to book a place in the final with Emirates Great Britain and Germany Deutsche Bank.
The final was then hotly contested with the Kiwi team and the British both holding the lead at different points before GBR were able to get ahead at the final mark and lead to the finish.
Black Foils Co-CEO and Driver Peter Burling said despite missing out in the final the team would take a lot from the event.
“I’m really pleased with how the team bounced back after what we saw as a tough result in Geneva. We put together a solid weekend here and executed the Final pretty much the way we wanted to — getting those right turns at the bottom. We lost a bit each time, which was frustrating, but overall it was a really good weekend for us. It’s nice to be back here and we’re already looking forward to getting into Abu Dhabi.”
Burling noted that there were close calls in the final.
“On that final turn towards the finish, we thought we’d be able to get to the zone off the left boundary, but we ended up on a much worse angle than expected going into the last mark. We were trying to get into the zone on the inside, but the Brits managed to just get an overlap on the outside. At that point we were just trying to make something happen. Still, we were happy to secure second and extend our gap over Spain and Australia in the overall standings.”
With another event featuring a range of race winners Burling believed the race for the Grand Final would continue to be tight until the very end.
“Every event we go into, we’re learning and developing, but we’re also there to win. Abu Dhabi will be quite different again with the 27-metre wing, probably the first time we’ll run that configuration in the Gulf. It’ll be interesting to see who can get the most out of the boat and the setup. We took some really good steps forward from Geneva to here, and we’ll look to keep building on that.”
The teams now turn their attention to the final event of the season next month in Abu Dhabi. The Championship-deciding Mubadala Abu Dhabi Sail Grand Prix 2025 Season Grand Final, presented by Abu Dhabi Sports Council, takes place on 29-30 November local time. All the action will be live in New Zealand on ThreeNow.
