France wins Germany Sail Grand Pix just days after driver is released from hospital

New York Times

18 hours ago

From the hospital and a crash that threatened their participation to spraying champagne on the podium. Somehow, Quentin Delapierre steered the French team to the unlikeliest of victories at the Germany Sail Grand Prix in Sassnitz on Sunday.
On Friday, during a wild and windy practice session, Delapierre suffered a face-plant into the cockpit of the French F50 catamaran after their carbon-fiber rudder exploded off the back of the boat and high into the air. After being released from hospital with a clean bill of health, Delapierre set sail on a tricky course that threw all kinds of curve balls at the fleet over the weekend.
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Where Saturday had been a test of nerve in strong, gusty winds that saw the F50s break new records for high-speed sailing, Sunday was a much more subtle game in lighter, patchy breeze. Even on their largest 24m wingsails, the teams were struggling to thread their way around a treacherous race course that made it very difficult to achieve 100 percent flying time above the water.
Like the French, the British could have been forgiven for suffering from some kind of trauma after the violent collision with the U.S. team which took them out of action on the final day of Saturday's session. The SailGP repair team pulled an all-nighter to get the British boat back into race-ready form.
Feeling guilty for their error in causing the collision, Taylor Canfield's crew donated a chunk of the U.S. boat as a like-for-like replacement that could be grafted into the broken British boat, effectively enabling Dylan Fletcher and his crew to go racing on Sunday.
Fletcher made the most of it and executed brilliantly throughout the day. The other teams will be looking back at the footage of Sunday's three fleet races and asking themselves why they didn't attempt the same simple approach to the all-vital start. Time and again the British were nearly always last into the start box, turning late into the bottom end of the starting error and making a late, but well-timed, charge towards the leeward end of the line. It didn't work perfectly every time but Fletcher's red boat was always fighting for the front places.
In the opening race, the French seized the early lead but a misjudgement at the bottom of the course saw them fall off the foils while the British swept into the lead. In the next race, the Australians stole Britain's early lead halfway through but Fletcher's team executed a brilliant jibe around the inside of Tom Slingsby's team to regain the lead and hold off the Aussies by just three seconds at the finish.
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In the final fleet race, Sebastien Schneiter, who got married just a weekend earlier, steered Switzerland to victory, although nowhere close to a place in the final. Behind the Swiss, the British secured their spot in the final with a second place, followed by the ever-consistent Australians in third, easily good enough to put Slingsby through to the final in pole position.
Further back, the battle for the minor places would be critical to see who would grab that third spot in the final, and France's fourth place was sufficient to push Delapierre ahead of the Germans. Having led overnight, the usually consistent Kiwis just couldn't hit their stride — Pete Burling never managing to get the Black Foils out in the front row of the start.
In the final, Britain yet again dominated the start, using their leeward-end approach to block out the Australians and outgun the French, who started at the top end of the line. The British led comfortably at the bottom gate and looked to have their rivals well under control, yet France found an extra waft of wind to ghost their way out from beneath the leaders and out into the front.
The Australians also found their way around the British who, after such an imposing performance throughout the afternoon, were left with little to show for it. As the TV commentators observed, it had been a game of Snakes & Ladders all afternoon, and Fletcher probably had a right to feel hard done by for sliding down the leaderboard at just the wrong moment.
'Having dominated the day it just didn't go our way in that last race,' Fletcher, speaking live onboard, said soon after racing. 'It's pretty painful, I'm not going to lie.'
The disconsolate British floated across the finish in third behind the Australians, with the jubilant French claiming their first event victory of the season. 'Playing with the [wind] shifts and the pressure, that was a good fun game and will be a good memory,' smiled the ever unflappable French driver Delapierre.
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Sunday's result sees Australia reclaim top of the season leaderboard, albeit tied on 61 points with the New Zealanders who are relegated to second overall. Britain moves to third overall on 58 points, with Spain just two points further behind.
The French looked good for an event win for much of the season and this mature performance in Germany sets Delapierre's crew up perfectly for a strong showing at the next event in front of their home crowd in St Tropez next month.
Sunday's racing was thrilling for its unpredictability and the strong test of tactical nous and boat handling skill. But after Saturday's collision between the U.S and Britain, and Friday's catastrophic technical failures on the French and the Brazilian boats, there are some serious questions about technical reliability and human safety yet to be addressed.
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