'Floating F1 cars' chase America's Cup victory

Sailors and designers from the East of England have played a key role in getting a British team into the America's Cup for the first time in 60 years.

Ineos Britannia, captained by the five-time Olympic medallist Sir Ben Ainslie, earned the right to challenge the defending champions by winning the Louis Vuitton Cup in Barcelona.

Two members of the crew are from the East of England, and their boat was designed in Brackley, Northamptonshire, and tested in Turweston, Buckinghamshire.

One of the crew members described their yacht as "a floating Formula 1 car".

The Ineos Britannia team have had very little time to celebrate their Louis Vuitton cup victory as their battle with the Emirates Team New Zealand for the America's Cup gets under way on 12 October.

By tradition, there is no runner-up - the contest is either won or lost.

Giles Scott, the Ineos Britannia's reserve helmsman, was born in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, and trained at Hollowell, Northamptonshire.

He said: "We've made it this far which is, in itself, a huge, huge achievement, something that's not been done for 60-odd years, but we all want a little bit more.

"We know it's going to be really quite tough against the Kiwis but it's exciting, the whole team is so into it, everyone's working tooth and nail to help with it to attempt to bring this cup home."

He believed the yachts taking part in sailing at this level were "floating formula one cars".

He said: "We work very closely with Mercedes F1 team and they've been amazing for us in terms of stepping on that evolution of the tech, we've had their drivers down, we've had George [Russell] and Lewis [Hamilton] round and showed them the boats. I think that says a lot of where the sport of sailing has got to."

He added the slightest difference in performance between the two America's Cup yachts could be crucial: "If they're doing 50 knots, we want to be doing 51."

Dylan Fletcher got the sailing bug at Pitsford Reservoir near Northampton 20 years ago and has been preparing along with the rest of the GB team for the world's oldest sailing competition.

Speaking from Barcelona, he said: "It's a bit bumpier out here to be honest but I do miss Pitsford and I'm looking forward to coming back there."

He said the fact that the defending champions do not have to compete for their place in the America's Cup can be a blessing and a curse.

"At the moment, we're actually using a lot of our good sails to get to the cup whereas they've got a little bit more development, but the flip side is they don't get the race-sharpening tools that we get by having so much intense battle."

Geoff Willis, who was the technical director for the Mercedes F1 Team at Brackley, took on the same role for Ineos Britannia.

He said: "We've had a base that was close to the F1 team at Turweston airfield [in Buckinghamshire] and for the whole of the fit out, the hull was brought up and then all the systems built into it, all the sub components tested."

He added that the biggest challenge now was to find out as much as possible about the opponents.

"We're in the interesting position that we really don't know our level of our competitive level compared with the New Zealand team," he said.

"New Zealand know a lot about us. They have all of our data from the races!"

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