The Louis Vuitton Cup came to an end on Monday for Orient Express Racing Team with a final defeat by Ineos Britannia, which denied them a place in the semi-finals. It was a disappointment for the French challenge, but a logical one given its late start to this America’s Cup campaign. Tip & Shaft takes a first look at the situation, with the challenger’s executives and a few outside experts.
The final straw came last Monday: by losing to Ineos Britannia, Orient Express Racing Team lost its last chance of reaching the semi-finals of the Louis Vuitton Cup, especially as Alinghi Racing Team, its rival for fourth place in the qualifiers, dominated Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli. With one victory in eight matches, the French record is meagre, but hardly surprising given the delay in the launch of Orient Express Racing Team, officially launched in February 2023, long after its rivals.
However, Christian Karcher, an America’s Cup specialist (six participations, three victories), doesn’t condemn the French, even saying that “it was better than expected, I thought they wouldn’t win any races, their victory in their first race against Alinghi made me think that they had really worked internally to get to this level”.
Unfortunately for the French challenger, the team subsequently failed to pick up a second win which would have enabled him to finish fourth, either due to a lack of reliability or because of mistakes, particularly during the start phase, which is crucial on these AC75s.
Thierry Fouchier, another of France’s great specialists in the event, which he won in 2010 with BMW Oracle, comments: “There were mistakes, and they admit it quite freely. The first match against the English in particular was very frustrating, because they were so close, but there were a few moments when they didn’t necessarily make the right decisions.” Thierry Douillard, coach of the French challenge, is no different: “We probably lost the semi-final against Ineos in the first round-robin match: we tied them up and gave them a penalty, but we lacked a bit of lucidity to finish, which would have put us in a good position for the rest of the competition.”
A lack of reliability
When it comes to explaining these failures, everyone, both inside and outside the challenge, obviously points to the very short time it took to understand, make reliable, develop and then master the French AC75, built from the design package purchased from Emirates Team New Zealand. “We clearly didn’t have enough time to make the boat more reliable. We lost three races because we weren’t able to use it, including the last one where we had a technical problem. And as soon as that happens on these AC75s, the performance is very significantly affected,” confirms Franck Cammas, Performance Director.
When explaining this lack of reliability, he adds: “It’s obvious that the more you sail, the more you stabilise things and the fewer risks you take in the final days before the races. As for us, as we were obliged to make the boat evolve right up to the last moment, there was a certain amount of risk involved in stabilising the systems, but it was a necessary choice if we wanted to have a chance of getting through.”
Marked by this early elimination, Quentin Delapierre (see his full interview in French on our website), while agreeing with the analysis of this difficult gap to make up, believes that “we probably lacked efficiency and intelligence in what we had to do, but we’re a young team, arriving a little late, so you make mistakes that others don’t”. What does this mean? “Maybe we didn’t trust the New Zealand design package enough. We did a bit too much straight-line analysis, training focused on how to go faster, when in reality, by having a good recon from Team New Zealand, we could have had quick answers to certain questions. As far as I’m concerned, we got a bit scattered, because we still had doubts about whether the New Zealanders were 100% or not. Some people around the table said we shouldn’t be sheep, but in the end, even if I’m caricaturing, we should have been. Because the time we spent trying to trim the boat in a straight line, we didn’t spend training on a course and in a starting box.”
Quentin Delapierre accepts his mistakes
This led to certain mistakes, which the skipper accepts: “On the starts, I didn’t manage to add my own added value, to be dominant, as I manage to do on SailGP. As leader of the project, I wasn’t clear enough to convince the team of my vision to simply copy what the Kiwis were doing, or too late, so I blame myself. Because in the end, we won four starts, two of which were really clean; the first, we won the match, the second, we were in the lead for part of the heat. That means that even though we probably weren’t the fastest, with good manoeuvres and good starts, we were capable of winning.”
For Christian Karcher, these mistakes “clearly reflect a lack of flying time”, adding: “On our Class America boats, which were going 10 knots upwind, we had 10 to 15 seconds to react, whereas they were going so fast that they barely had one or two seconds, so you need incredible trust between the two pilots. And that comes with time.”
Thierry Douillard explains: “When I see the progression curve in terms of boat handling, performance and racing, it‘s very frustrating to stop here. Clearly, Alinghi was on a par with us, even though they started two years before us, sailed 100 days on their Boat Zero (before the new one was launched this year) and I don’t know how many AC40 training sessions in Jeddah. We were capable of springing a surprise.”
Two crucial months
That wasn’t the case for Orient Express Racing Team, whose priority now is to prepare for the future. “We‘re only waiting for one thing, and that’s for our partners to be ready to join us again, because it would be such a shame to put aside everything we’ve learnt in a year and a half. And if we want to be ambitious, we have to go out and recruit people who know to help us to progress” , confirms Franck Cammas, who after the 35th Cup at the helm of Groupama Team France in 2017 didn’t manage to put the project on a permanent footing. “Now is when it all comes down to it,“ adds Christian Karcher. “Not only do we need everyone to stay, but we also need to shop around, because all the good people are still here, whereas in two months’ time, they’ll be scattered across all the challenges.”
Asked about the next stage of the adventure, Stephan Kandler, co-director of the challenge with Bruno Dubois, is both optimistic and cautious: “Of course we’re discussing the next stage with our partners, but now we’re waiting to find out when and where the next edition will take place. We already know that we’ll have the same boats, which is very important because it determines a large part of the budget.” For Thierry Fouchier, “it’s complicated to sell a project today with so many unknowns, but the other syndicates don’t have this problem because they rely on patrons who give them the means, whatever happens, to wait for the protocol and start again for the next campaign.”
However, Stephan Kandler has announced that there will be an immediate follow-up: “There are a number of projects in the pipeline which we will be announcing shortly and which will enable us to continue to put the whole thing on a permanent footing. Today, we have an infrastructure, tools, assets with our three boats, a home port (Lorient, see our article). We’re much better equipped to launch a new campaign, and it’ll cost even less!” Will the French still be present on SailGP in season 5? While Stephan Kandler reserves his answer for later, the President of the French Sailing Federation, Jean-Luc Denéchau considers this pursuit vital: “The big advantage of this Cup project is that it’s coupled with SailGP, which means we can avoid what has always been fatal for us in recent years, namely a ‘stop and go’ and seeing our talent end up strengthening foreign teams.”
