Second and final day of the SailGP league Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix presented by P&O Marinas, the sixth event of Season 4 taking place at Mina Rashid.
All 10 of SailGP’s national teams have opted to sail with the larger 29m wing on the second day to compensate for the light wind forecast.
Race 4 – Ben Ainslie came flyng out of the line to lead all the way to the finish 8min 13sec later! Second New Zealand and third Denmark. Jimmy Spithill and Australia taking fourth to keep their overall lead.
All on the final fleet race to decide the three Final race competitors . . .
Race 5 – Great Britain DSQ on the start, after what looked like a winning start!
Canada took the win ahead of France and the USA with Taylor Canfield getting by far his best result in third.
This made the line-up for the Final winner-takes-all race: New Zealand, Australia and Canada.
Final race – with the big wing and just four crew, saw Jimmy Spithill take Australia into the lead from the start, with Canada second and New Zealand third. Spithill kept the lead at Gate 2.
At Gate 3 Phil Robertson on Canada took the lead ahead of Burling’s New Zealand.
At Gate 4 all three meet in the give-way circle with Burling and New Zealand rounding on the inside to cross the finish line overlapped with Australia to claim the Dubai Sail Grand Prix.
Canada crossed ahead of those two but were penalised from the Gate 4 rounding.
On day 1 the 24m wing was used.
The light wind 29 m wing was temporarily taken out of use following the failure of New Zealand’s wingsail in Saint-Tropez.
But after racing on Saturday had to shortened as the teams struggled to get on the foils, SailGP CEO Russell Coutts offered teams the choice of the 24m or 29m wing when racing continues in Dubai.
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