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There’s no sport quite like Sail GP. It’s been called F1 on water, which is a fair assessment – especially since four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel is a backer of the German team that debuted this season.
Germany is one of ten nations competing in Season Four of the competition, where identical, hi-tech F50 catamarans race at dizzying speeds up to 100km/h.
This weekend, the competition will take to Sydney Harbour for the Australian Sail Grand Prix, the eighth stop of the 13-round season which takes place in glamorous locations around the world.
Here’s everything you need to know about the sport – and why this weekend is a must-watch.
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WHAT IS SAIL GP?
Sailing has a long history of competition – from the Olympics to the America’s Cup, the oldest ongoing international sporting contest. But the America’s Cup only takes place every three or four years, and the main event happens between just two competing yachts.
Sail GP (which stands for Grand Prix) was founded as an annual competition for teams – representing nations – to compete with the same machinery on a regular schedule.
That’s a key difference that sets Sail GP apart. Instead of a technological arms race between rival teams, like motor racing or the America’s Cup, using the same yachts means Sail GP is a test of skill and tactics.
And the yachts themselves are special. The F50 catamarans are based on those used in the America’s Cup in 2017 – the AC50. In another connection with the F1 world, Great Britain’s challenger for the 2017 America’s Cup was built alongside Red Bull Advanced Technologies – headed by Adrian Newey, who led the development of Red Bull’s dominant F1 car.
But the F50 has been developed year on year to become almost unbelievably complex and advanced yachts.
The name F50 is straightforward. 50 stands for 50 feet, the length of the carbon fibre hull. The F stands for foiling, which is when a boat’s hull (or hulls, in the case of a catamaran) is lifted out of the water on hydrofoils, or small wings that poke out of the bottom of the hulls.
Like the wings on a plane, they create lift, and the boats appear to fly or hover in the air with only these small carbon fibre foils under the water.
By lifting the hull out of the water, foiling reduces drag – and allows the yachts to hit staggering speeds. The current SailGP record is 53.96 knots or 99.94 km/h.
Next year, the foils will be replaced by a new model made out of titanium – and they expect speeds up to 110km/h or 59 knots.
If you don’t understand foiling, don’t worry. All you need to know is that these boats (with five crew members each) are hi-tech, extremely complex machines. And really, really fast.
As SailGP CEO Russell Coutts told Time recently: “When you look into the cockpit of one of these boats, it is like looking into an aircraft. You’ve got all the control panels. It looks like a Formula 1 steering wheel.
“You’ve got various control switches on the steering wheel. If there was anything like medium wind and upwards, a club sailor would probably hurt himself.”
Sir Russell Coutts himself was a champion sailor, who won a gold medal at the 1984 Olympics and won the America’s Cup five times among many other successes.
HOW DOES THE COMPETITION WORK?
It started out with six teams (each representing a nation, including Australia), competing across five events. It’s rapidly expanded, with Season 4 – the current season – seeing ten teams compete at 13 events.
In each event, the entire field races six times (called a fleet race). They’re rapid, chaotic races, and they usually last around 12 minutes.
Each team gets points depending on where they finish each race (10 points for first, all the way down to one for last place).
After that, the top three teams based on event points face off in a final.
The winner gets 10 championship points, second gets nine, third gets eight, and the other seven teams get points depending on their ranking in the event.
There’s a $200,000 USD prize for the winner of each event.
At the end of the season, the three teams highest on the championship leaderboard race off in the Grand Final – a single race where the winning team picks up a $2m USD prize.
And here’s the crazy thing: the Australian team, led by skipper Tom Slingsby, have won all three Grand Finals so far. And this year, after seven of 13 rounds, they once again lead the championship in their pursuit of a fourth-straight title.
Slingsby was already a sailing legend before SailGP came around. He won three-straight world championships sailing Laser dinghies. Then he won the 2012 London Olympics gold medal in that category. He was the strategist for USA’s 2013 America’s Cup win, and skippered Perpetual LOYAL to line honours victory in the 2016 Sydney to Hobart race. He’s won multiple world sailor of the year awards too.
He’s just one of many sailing superstars competing in SailGP. It’s the best of the best: world champions, America’s Cup winners, Olympic medallists. Put them in extremely advanced yachts and the result is elite racing.
HOW POPULAR IS IT?
SailGP is one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. Think pickleball – another niche sport that has exploded into the mainstream.
SailGP started with six teams competing at five events. Now, it’s up to ten teams at 13 events. Next year, there’ll be another two teams added, and the eventual aim is around 20 races – just like F1.
What’s critical is that it’s not just popular among sailing fans. SailGP CEO Sir Russell Coutts told Time that only around 30 to 40 per cent of fans have any other connection in sailing.
Last November, an investment group led by Marc Lasry, former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA, bought the U.S. team for a SailGP record price. The ownership group also includes a host of sporting superstars such as heavyweight boxing world champion Deontay Wilder and a number of NFL stars, as well as Hollywood actors and even a founding Uber engineer.
The cost was claimed to be nearly $80m USD by the Sports Business Journal.
Coutts said: “We started selling teams between $5 million and $10 million [USD]. Now you can’t buy a team without $35 million. We know we’ve got demand for teams. We can’t build boats fast enough.”
And fans are flocking to watch both in person and on broadcast, where global viewership in the first half of this season is up about 24 per cent on last season.
HOW DANGEROUS IS IT?
Well, foiling is inherently difficult. The tiniest mistake – or shift of the wind – and the boat can go crashing back into the water or capsize.
Controlling what is effectively a 2,500kg wind-powered rocket at speeds up to 100km/h – while racing nine opponents around a course with strict boundaries – means crashes are inevitable.
One of the most infamous crashes happened in Sydney in season two, when the British team slammed into the Japanese team at high speeds, causing severe damage – though luckily no-one was injured.
Even when the yachts are just cruising along and not racing, they’re still extremely complex and hard to control. Take Australia’s ‘Flying Roo’, which narrowly avoided capsizing in Italy last year when it was merely parading for a crowd after a day of training.
There’s been no shortage of crashes down the years – and plenty of damage to the yachts that are worth around $4m USD each. Luckily, there have been no deaths.
WHAT WILL SYDNEY BE LIKE?
For one thing, windy. After a series of events this season with light wind conditions – which means slower racing – the forecast is for some of the heaviest wind conditions of the entire season.
Last year, a freak weather event after Saturday’s racing damaged a host of boats and saw Sunday’s racing cancelled entirely.
“It’s a really tricky, challenging venue, which creates a lot of exciting racing, lead changes and opportunity,” said Taylor Canfield, driver of the United States team.
Canada driver Phil Robertson said that light winds – such as last time out in Abu Dhabi – create “Micky Mouse racing: it’s open to anyone, that’s the reality.”
He added: “I’m especially looking forward to Sydney because we have done a lot of light air sailing in the last four or five events and Sydney is going to be a reality check.”
A reality check of just how hard it is to control these boating behemoths in big wind.
But if things get really windy, we could easily see history made this weekend.
As Slingsby told the Financial Review: “Last year I think we got to 95-96 km/h in Sydney, so if we get a good solid sea-breeze or a big southerly front come down the coast, it will be a good shot for us to break that 100 km/h mark.”
That would be a stunning achievement – and the Bureau of Meteorology currently forecast a southerly of 20 to 30 km/h on Saturday.
Just as important for Team Australia is the opportunity to win their first race of the season. Slingsby’s team leads the championship thanks to a lot of podium finishes throughout the season – but they’re still awaiting their first race win of the campaign.
Australia has 56 points after seven rounds (from a maximum of 70, given 10 points goes to the winner each event). New Zealand has 50 and the United States and Denmark have 43 each.
It’s another close campaign, and Sydney is poised to deliver the best event of the season so far.
RACE DAY 1: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24
Race Times: 16:00-17:30 AEDT
RACE DAY 2: SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 25
Race Times: 16:00-17:30 AEDT
Watch all the action live and free on Kayo Freebies, or on Foxtel where Fox Sports News (Channel 500) will also show both days in full.
Watch SailGP FREE & LIVE on Kayo Freebies. New to Kayo? Start Your Free Trial Today >
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