Season 2 to begin in San Francisco

AMERICAS CUP – The second season of the AC45 World Series (2012/2013) will take place in less than a month from now from the 21^st to 26^th August in San Francisco. The crew of Energy Team will be lining up to confirm the excellent results they obtained in the 2011-2012 season. There is a modification to the format of the events, which will now be identical at each leg… and each race will count more than last year.

A new season and a new challenge for Energy Team. Third in the 2011/2012 fleet racing championship, the team managed by Bruno and Loïck Peyron will have to confirm the improvements they have been making next month at the start of the second season of the AC45 World Series, which is set to begin in San Francisco on 21st August: for the first time, the teams will be sailing on the waters for the 34^thAmerica’s Cup, and the French team will have to get to grips with these conditions.

After a variety of formulae were tried out in the first season, the format of the events has been modified. Iain Murray, the Australian Racer Director has just officially confirmed that. There are at least two major changes to consider. Firstly, unlike last year, the format will stay the same at every leg: five days of racing finishing with the big final on Super Sunday. Secondly, the races raced before the big final will have a higher weighting in the overall rankings. “In short, the impact of each race in the fleet racing and match racing has been increased in the season’s overall rankings”, explained Iain Murray.

A bonus for consistency
At each leg, racing will begin on Wednesday afternoon with the match racing. Over the following three days up until Saturday, two fleet races will be run with points counting towards qualification for the match race semi-finals. On the closing day, Super Sunday, the top four teams in the match racing overall rankings will meet in the semi-finals and the winners will face each other in the final big duel. Finally, all the teams will compete in the final race in the Fleet Race championship. Just one small adjustment has been made to this schedule, which will reward consistency: for the first event in San Francisco, the semi-final and the final of the match racing (which will usually take place on the Sunday) will be raced on Saturday afternoon, in order to make the most of the best weather conditions, as if racing began too early on Sunday, there would be the risk that the match racing would take place in light and variable conditions, before the sea breezes had time to develop. We should add that racing will be shown on TV from Friday through Sunday, with the highlights of Thursday’s racing also being shown.

So from now on, they are going to have to show what they can do from the outset on Wednesday and then remain consistent all the way through. Energy Team knows how to do that: if this rule had been applied last season, their position in the rankings would have been even better. So in other words, this is all very good news!