The 37th America’s Cup came to a close last Saturday with Emirates Team New Zealand’s clear 7-2 victory over Ineos Britannia. Tip & Shaft takes stock of this edition with architects Guillaume Verdier, Martin Fischer, Sam Manuard, Benjamin Muyl and Antoine Lauriot Prévost, and engineer Dimitri Despierres.
Three and a half years after its victory in Auckland on Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, Emirates Team New Zealand won the America’s Cup for the third time in a row, defeating Ineos Britannia. The two rivals had AC75s with quite opposite hulls. Antoine Lauriot Prévost, architect at VPLP Design (who, on this campaign, sent Adrien Letourneur to Luna Rossa, in charge of appendage design), notes: “It’s interesting that there were so many different answers to the same question. As for the finalists, Team New Zealand had a fluid hull, with smoother shapes, while the English had a more complex hull, and you can imagine they made a lot of use of digital tools.”
For Dimitri Despierres, head of American Magic’s mechatronics department, “you can see the influence of the Mercedes F1 team on Ineos : they’ve gone for some complicated stuff, unlike Team Zew Zealand, which has designed a simpler hull”. Ineos Britannia’s chief designer, Martin Fischer, confirms that the partnership with Mercedes has led the British design team to explore new avenues: “This collaboration has enabled us to use a lot more resources, particularly in terms of calculations, and therefore to look in places which, at first glance, weren’t necessarily promising. That’s what led us in a different direction from the others when it came to the shape of the hull.”
In this case, a very voluminous shape, where Team New Zealand’s more classic one was almost at the lower limit of the rule in terms of volume, in order to minimize aerodynamic drag as much as possible. “We opted for a larger, taller hull, because with this shape, we could influence the flow around the sails, thus improving their efficiency and the propulsive force”, explains Martin Fischer.
Ineos more at ease in heavy seas
This choice has particularly enabled Ineos Britannia to perform better in strong winds and, above all, in heavy seas. It was in these conditions that Ben Ainslie’s men got the better of Luna Rossa in the Louis Vuitton Cup final (7-4 victory) and scored their two points in the Match against Team New Zealand.
“The English hull design proved to be aerodynamically efficient in heavy seas,” confirms Sam Manuard, who was part of the Alinghi Red Bull Racing design team for this Cup. “The English managed to reach the final because, in my opinion, they had stiffer appendages and perhaps cavitated less”, observes Guillaume Verdier who, although he was under contract to Emirates Team New Zealand for this edition, ”took a step back “ within the Kiwi design team to design the AC75.
For Martin Fischer, the key to the British AC75’s good performance in the sea lies in the foils: “The rule imposed such a minimum weight that each team was obliged to add weight to the foils, i.e. a bulb. Ideally, it should have been placed out of the water to generate less drag, but that wasn’t possible, because there was also a minimum distance to be respected between the foil’s axis of rotation and its center of gravity, so all the teams divided the bulb in two, one at the very bottom of the foil, one out of the water. We then had to decide on the position of the dry bulb: the Kiwis chose to place it very low, which enabled them to keep it out of the water on flat seas, but in the waves, they often touched the water, which wasn’t the case for us, as ours was higher, so a good part of the difference can be explained like that.”
Kiwi drag chasing
What other differences did our experts find between the two finalists that might explain Team New Zealand’s superiority? “As Team New Zealand’s general concept is to reduce drag as much as possible, they were able to sail with slightly smaller headsails than the competition, which also helped them lose less speed during maneuvers”, notes Sam Manuard.
“I thought it was clever of Team New Zealand that their bustle under the hull extended right up to the rudder,” adds Guillaume Verdier. “This allowed them to have a smoother deck aft, with no protuberance to attach the top of the rudder, but also a potentially smaller rudder.” Hence less drag. Antoine Lauriot Prévost believes that “a lot of work was done on the rudders: the New Zealanders’ rudder had an extremely weak chord over a large part of its height, which gave them quite a lot of drag savings, even if, in terms of maneuverability for the crew, it wasn’t going to be easy”.
Did the month the Kiwis had to develop their AC75, while Ineos was engaged in the semi-finals and then the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup, work in their favor? “I find it hard to believe in the ‘silver bullett’ that appears in the last fortnight and suddenly makes all the difference,” replies Benjamin Muyl, head of the design department of the French challenge Orient Express Racing Team. “On the other hand, we did see a few evolutions, and they must have thought, when they saw that Ineos had a smaller rudder than the rest of the fleet, that it was something to try, hence the new rudder they used, with less wetted surface. But given the time it takes to manufacture all these parts, it must have been a solution they had anticipated.”
New Zealand’s “choreography”
Despite the differences between the two AC75s, our experts believe that the victory of Peter Burling’s men was not necessarily down to the intrinsic qualities of the boats. “If you look at the figures, in VMG terms, we were faster in more than half the races. On the other hand, we generally lost out quite a bit on maneuvers. And probably also on the change of boat mode: when the wind changed, the Kiwis adapted more quickly than we did”, confirms Martin Fischer. “There were far fewer differences between the finalists than in the 36th Cup. On the other hand, there were differences in the way they used the boat and exploited its potential, particularly in maneuvers and transition zones,” adds Sam Manuard.
“The New Zealanders were clinical and solid throughout, and managed to execute things in an incredible way. It was really a beautiful choreography”, admires Benjamin Muyl. This can be explained by the experience of a team that has relied on the same hard core for three editions, the time spent on the water, but also by a great deal of work on external aids to navigation, a key element of success. “One aspect that was very important this year was the software,” confirms Antoine Lauriot Prévost. “In fact, we saw the English take a major step forward during the Louis Vuitton Cup, and it seems that a lot depended on the modification and improvement of their navigation software codes.”
For Dimitri Despierres, this is a major challenge for the 38th edition, if the measurement rules change little: “Today, the biggest gains are in the use of the boat and its intelligence, so in the programming we can do to facilitate the crew’s work. And in this respect, the Kiwis have delivered a master class: when you see them tacking and coming out super-stable, you feel the work of the crew, but also all that the intelligence of the boat can allow.” As Guillaume Verdier sums up: “It’s one thing to have a space shuttle in your hands, but it’s quite another to use it properly.”
38th America’s Cup: where and when?
Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton was delighted this week with the success of the 37th edition, which attracted 2.56 million visitors to Barcelona. Commenting on the next edition, he expressed his wish “to increase audience and engagement across different regions, territories and demographics”, before adding: “It would be difficult to expand the number of teams based on the available infrastructure space in Barcelona.” According to our information, while the Catalan city has not been ruled out, Valencia and the Middle East are possible destinations for 2027, while as far as the teams are concerned, all those who were in the game intend to do it again (provided budgets are finalized), with Cowes-based Royal Yacht Squadron, representing Ineos Britannia , having already been accepted once again as challenger of record, while Sweden’s Artemis are likely to return to the game.
Photo: Ricardo Pinto / America’s Cup
