After the most intense battle of the Challenger event so far, the points are still even in the Louis Vuitton Cup Final, with INEOS Britannia and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli on two wins each.
Race Day 3 started with Ben Ainslie’s British team getting the race 3 point after the Italians were disqualified for having shore team members on-board to replace its damaged mainsail when the race was declared live.
The second race of the day was described by the commentators as one that would go down as an America’s Cup classic – for the AC75 – showing what can be achieved when everything aligns for this modern era yacht, and just how boom or bust, depending on the weather conditions, their performance is.
After the softly, softly of the previous day we saw some extremely close encounters in maximum conditions with INEOS Britannia protesting several manouvers from the Italians, and a tight race with LUna Rossa covering Ineos all the way to secure the win with INEOS Britannia closing fast, finishing just four seconds behind.
At the start INEOS Britannia pushed the Italians high and away from the line, protesting, complete with expletives, as Luna Rossa squeezed across the bow of the British boat to get back to the start line.
The umpires didn’t see the incident the same way and there was no penalty – it handed the initiative and a slightly better start to the Italians.
At the gun Luna Rossa was tight to leeward on INEOS Britannia who tacked away immediately, with the Italians following.
At the first cross Luna Rossa tacked directly in front of INEOS Britannia, a luff from the British boat again failed to get the penalty from the umpires.
When Ainslie and co. tacked away, the Italians let them go this time, with both boats sailing to the layline, at gate 1 the gap was just four seconds.
Luna Rossa extended to 200m and at gate 2 rounded 6 sec ahead, and again went into a tacking duel. At gate 3 Luna Rossa led around the left-hand mark with the British just five seconds behind.
By gate 4 Luna Rossa had an 11 sec lead and pulled clear to a 390m lead, rounding gate 5 with a 16 sec lead, and splitting sides to extend to 450
A final, dramatic push on the penultimate leg by the Brits forced an error from Luna Rossa as they missed a layline and had to do an extra tack.
Ineos closed the Italians down and at gate 7 had reduced thier lead to 50m and just 6 sec.
Luna Rossa opened a gap of 150m at the start of the final leg, when Ineos gybed away and started to close, running out of track just before Luna Rossa managed to secure the win of the second race, with INEOS Britannia just four seconds behind.
Asked about the protest calls that were denied as INEOS Britannia challenged the ‘keep clear’ rule, Ainslie commented:
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen the Umpire’s App, and the App really can often tell a different story – and that’s obviously what the Umpires are going off.”
“The pre-start one I thought was very, very, close and in our view, it was a penalty. The other two I need to look at because it’s just the nuances of whether you get an overlap or not and I’m sure it was very tight.”
Racing continues Monday 30 September, with two more races scheduled in conditions expected to be similar to Sunday. Live on You TUbe here from 13:00 UK (14:00 CEST).
