Key questions answered ahead of Britain’s America’s Cup challenge

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Great Britain will play in the America’s Cup for the first time in 60 years when they face New Zealand in Barcelona, ​​with the best-of-13 series starting on Saturday.

Four-time Olympic champion Sir Ben Ainslie led Ineos Britannia to victory over Italy in the Louis Vuitton Cup to secure the Royal Yacht Squadron’s place as official challenger.

Here, the PA news agency looks back at how the team was founded and its journey to achieving a coveted place in the 37th America’s Cup.

Where did it all start?

Ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, Ainslie announced the formation of his own team – Ben Ainslie Racing (BAR) – which would compete in the 2012/13 America’s Cup World Series qualifying events. BAR was endorsed by the United States at the time. team Oracle Racing, with Ainslie joining them as tactician for their ultimately successful defense of the 34th America’s Cup in 2013. Being part of the winning side that defeated New Zealand after a remarkable fightback from 8-1 down in San Francisco, Ainslie began raising a funding target of around £80 million for a homegrown British team looking to build towards qualification for the 2017 edition of the oldest international sporting competition.

The high-profile launch in June 2014 at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, was attended by the then Duchess of Cambridge, who is a keen sailor. BAR was now backed by Carphone Warehouse co-founder Sir Charles Dunstone and with experienced New Zealand America’s Cup campaigner Jono McBeth on board as sailing team manager, while Red Bull designer Adrian Newey would also later join to lead design and engineering .

Did it go smoothly?

Not quite. Despite significant government investment of £7.5 million to support the redevelopment of Portsmouth Harbor for the team’s headquarters on the Camber, there has been a continued push for major commercial sponsorship deals to stay on course for a shot at the America’s Cup . 2015/2016 World Series campaign including a stage win in Portsmouth, where Prince William joined his wife to cheer on the British team. However, hopes of becoming the showpiece of the 2017 America’s Cup races in Bermuda were dashed by defeat to Emirates Team New Zealand in the challenger’s semi-final.

How important has INEOS funding been?

Decisive. The £110m deal, which was quickly agreed in April 2018, initially came about after Ineos chairman Jim Ratcliffe chatted with Ainslie over a beer in a pub, having been introduced through a mutual friend. It has certainly proven to be money well spent, both inside and out. of the water. The size of the investment, the largest in British sailing history, provided the financial strength needed to build and test two foiling monohull boats and enabled Ainslie to retain key staff – including CEO Grant Simmer, a four-time America’s Cup winner and chief designer Nick Holroyd – while fellow former Olympic champion Giles Scott would later take on the role of head of sailing. However, the team endured a difficult World Series, being reduced to just one event in Auckland in December 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, before also falling short against Italy’s Luna Rossa in the 2021 Prada Cup qualifying regatta.

In December 2019, another crucial partnership was agreed with a division of the Mercedes Motorsport F1 team based in Brackley, Northamptonshire. The groundbreaking collaboration, which also involved cycling team Ineos Grenadiers, has seen collaboration in areas such as engineering, human science, simulation and data analytics to help identify performance improvements. The designers of the 2024 Britannia candidate boat moved to an airfield near the headquarters in Brackley, where there was a hangar large enough for construction and to make full use of Mercedes’ state-of-the-art technology. The most modern facilities together with technical expertise. With live race data collected by the Sailing Support Room, Ainslie made a point of dedicating the Louis Vuitton Cup triumph to “a lot of people in Brackley” who had all helped make their AC75 yacht a lot better are when Great Britain reached the America’s Cup for the first time since Tony Boyden’s Sovereign challenge in 1964.