SYDNEY (AP) — Quentin Delapierre steered the French team to three straight wins in gusty, shifting winds Saturday to take a six-point lead over Jimmy Spithill’s U.S. team on Day 1 of the Australia Sail Grand Prix.
The American boat placed second in the first two races and fifth in the third to hold second spot with 24 points, and the two-time defending series champion Australians were third after a difficult day with 20 points, one ahead of Emirates GBR.
“We tried to push harder in these tricky conditions and it was quite rough,” Delapierre said. ”I tried to keep the boat in a safe position and tried to get the right start and for now it works.”
There’s two scheduled fleet races on Sunday before the top three teams advance to the race final on Sydney Harbour.
The Aussies were going for a hat trick on home waters in the Australia Sail Grand Prix, the third-to-last regatta of SailGP’s third season but had technical problems before and during the first race and had to settle for third, fourth and sixth in the three races.
A dramatic afternoon started before the opening race. Australia initially said it wouldn’t be able to make the start because of mechanical problems but then rejoined the fleet with 30 seconds to go, taking an early lead and holding it until incurring a penalty at the last gate.
GBR briefly surged to the lead but grinder Matt Gotrel fell overboard and the British dropped back to sixth as the crew pulled him back in, allowing the French and Americans to sail to first and second.
GBR strategist Hannah Mills said Gotrel was fine, but “it was a pretty scary situation — he went straight over the front, but the guys did a get job getting him back on board.”
Ahead of the weekend, Team Australia, the two-time defending champion in the global league, held a nine-point lead in the season standings over New Zealand, with Britain’s Ben Ainslie another five points back.
After Day 1 in Sydney, Ainslie’s Emirates GBR was in fourth spot on 19 points after finishing second in the third race, one point ahead of Denmark. New Zealand was in sixth place on 17 points and Canada had 14.
Spithill said the wind “really played havoc” with the racing among the nine 50-foot catamarans on Saturday.
“The gusts were like bullets hitting,” he said during a TV interview. “Downwind when you’re going head to head with other boats, it’s full on.”
After two light-air regattas in Dubai and Singapore, won by Australia and New Zealand, the season wraps up in the windier venues of Sydney, Christchurch and San Francisco. The top three teams at the end of the San Francisco regatta will sail in the $1 million Grand Final.
The U.S. team is lagging in the season standings and needs to finish strongly to have any chance of qualifying for the winner-take-all Grand Final.
“We have no choice but to to really get a good event this time,” he said. “We’ve done a lot of work after the last event. We’ve definitely got the hammer down and we’re full throttle into tomorrow.”
__
More AP sports: https://apnews.com/hub/sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports