Ben Ainslie has criticized the contentious penalty call that knocked the Great Britain team out of the SailGP Final as ‘a bad call’.
Australia driver Tom Slingsby, who called for an umpires decison on the port and starboard cross with Britain, said he was unsure if the crucial penalty handed to Great Britain was deserved.
Ainslie was penalised by chief umpire Craig Mitchell following a tight port and starboard incident with Tom Slingby’s Australia as he headed for the finish line and certain qualification to the Final.
The penalty decision meant Great Britain had to slow and drop behind Australia, thus finishing fourth and losing out to Nicolai Sehested’s Denmark who claimed third place in the Final sail-off race with New Zealand and Australia.
Speaking about the race, Ainslie said he had watched the replay of the incident and still disagreed with the decision.
“We were still accelerating out of our gybe so from a long way out it probably didn’t look that good, but you can when see the boats come together that we’re a long way apart,” he said.
“Ultimately, we could say that we should have done a better job by getting more points and getting into that final race but it’s tight in SailGP and it comes down to those final margins,” Ainslie said.
He acquiesced that refereeing the match is a ‘tough job’ but was adamant that his team has been on the receiving end of ‘some pretty bad calls’.
Australia driver Tom Slingsby said he was unsure if the crucial penalty handed to Great Britain was deserved.
“I don’t know if it should have been a penalty,” he said. “It was touch and go, but luck went our way.”
He defended his decision to protest Great Britain’s action, adding, ‘if the roles were reversed, he would have gone for us to get a penalty and we had to do the same with him’.
It was also noted at the time by the race commentators that Slingsby appeared to pull a ‘Hollywood’ manoeuvre on his approach to accentuate the closeness of the crossing.
The umpires use a simulator tool to predict a (ghost) boats position in three boat-lengths time.
Ainsle claims that the ghost-boat predictive software did not take any acceleration or deceleration into account and that they had been accelerating from a gybe, and that this not allowed for on the software.
New Zealand went on to win the Final race, their first SailGP event win.
Britain are second overall in Series 3 behind Australia after three rounds of the ten event 2022-2023 series.
