Come the 2007 Cup in Valencia and Braun is designing sails for Larry Ellison’s BMW Oracle team which, in spite of having resources to match NASA, failed to get beyond the final four in the Louis Vutton Cup after being knocked out by Luna Rossa in the semi-finals. But while the sailing programme failed to deliver, the same could not be said of the boatbuilding team led my Mark Turner and Tim Smyth – Oracle’s last Farr design seen here was claimed to be the most millimetre-perfect ACC yacht ever built. Just not fast enough. Below: having failed to do the job in similar yachts, the next Oracle campaign took a different route, via the US courts, to win the Cup at Ellison’s third attempt. For many the approach itself jarred, but there is no doubting the magnificent feat of design and engineering the now Coutts-led USA team pulled off in coming up with Godzilla… and then getting it around the racecourse with little drama after a challenging series of technical problems in the run-up to the Cup including an engine-room fire a few days before the Match started
They both have the engineers and simu-
lations, but since these companies do not focus on sailing you have to refine or redo a lot of the expertises they have. It is a building process and you might think it can work seamlessly, but it seldom does. There are lots of challenges, but there’s
real potential too – but it depends how your team is structured and your expecta- tions. Racing for the America’s Cup is very different from Formula 1 development or being alongside Airbus (working with American Magic) with aircraft develop- ment. Their goals and objectives are very different and so are their timelines. What they accept in a process is defined
differently. You have to realise that there are differences, then try to figure out where the overlap is and make sure you take advantage of that as best you can. In the America’s Cup we basically design, build and race the prototype, while in F1 they are not racing a prototype, but a revision from last year reflecting whatever was changed under their rules. Then they do their research, test it, refine
it and evaluate it. Also, our resources do not compare with what the Formula 1 guys have – we’re trying to build from scratch and they’re trying to make small tweaks with numerous engineers and tremendous human and financial resources. But a new sort of development model could be emerging in sailing, at least
48 SEAHORSE
Sir Jim Ratcliffe), while Alinghi looked to control the design process and use the Formula 1 guys as contractors to answer project-oriented questions. Which one is better, being in control or
acting as consultant? Time will tell… maybe neither or maybe both. In the marine environment if someone
has a good idea it’s easy to discuss it. The groups are small and the teams are small. Formula 1 teams have thousands of employ- ees with very defined hierarchical structures and lots of peaks and valleys. You have your lead guy on one segment and he’s got this big dark valley down there with lots of people, and then you get this other lead guy over here who’s on top of his pyramid with another valley full of people… and the two valleys don’t always talk to each other. And that can be a problem when you’re
with the association with companies like Mercedes and Red Bull F1. You find the overlaps, where there’s a complementary design process; each could take advantage of the other and then you have a synergy that maybe works as a development path for future boats. With Ineos, Mercedes was much more in control of the design process (because of the association with
designing something new and different and trying to get the most out of it. You have got to try to blend it together and in the America’s Cup you never have the time. It takes a long time to build the boat, a long time to build the mast, a long time to build the foils, maybe the sails not so long. The challenge is that most of the analysis
that’s being done at high fidelity in simula- tion isn’t dynamic and the boats are very dynamic, meaning they move. So you take a boat state and run a high fidelity solu- tion, with complicated CFD; but on the water the boat may only hit that singular
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