America’s Cup: Team NZ chief executive Grant Dalton indicates upgrade timeline as racing begins in Barcelona

Win or lose, don’t read too much into what you’ve seen from Team New Zealand this week.

While the final preliminary America’s Cup regatta in Barcelona, which finishes early tomorrow morning, provides a vital opportunity for teams to get a feel for their AC75s in a proper race setting, it holds more weight for some teams than others.

For the challengers, it provides vital information about how well-positioned they are heading into next week’s Louis Vuitton Cup challenger series.

In an event where teams always talk about wanting more time, Team NZ are in the position where they are the only team with some left to play with.

For the challengers, the Louis Vuitton Cup round-robins commencing next week is the first hurdle on their way to dethroning the Kiwi crew. For Team NZ, they will compete in the round-robins but simply to get more racing under their belts before the Cup match in October.

Speaking to Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking before the event, Team NZ chief executive Grant Dalton said it would be interesting to see how they went had the wind stayed toward the upper end of the range, but their plans had some way to go yet.

“The other thing we always have to keep reminding ourselves, and this is a lesson of San Francisco, they don’t count our points until October.

“We have a lot of stuff in the pipeline coming which will only make us faster and it’s not on stream at the moment.”

As for the challengers, Dalton said he believed they would be very close to full strength, with any upgrades they had in store likely to be made already ahead of their lone hit-out before races that count for them.

Ahead of the preliminary regatta, Inoes Britannia helmsman Sir Ben Ainslie told the Herald that Team NZ and Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli looked like the sharpest outfits. Dalton echoed Ainslie’s thought about the Italians, noting that at this early point they were standing out from the pack.

What has been key over the coming week for the challengers has been refining the playbook and maximising the performance of the boat through sailing and techniques, with no team yet to truly get an idea of where they sit despite some practice racing over the couple of days prior to the event.

That has proven to be the case, with teams trying different moves inside the starting box, though most have sailed fairly clear races once they got over the line.

“Three weeks from now, one’s going home. So, they’ve got nothing other than techniques and the way they sail; they’ve got nothing left in the tank.

“Maybe that tank is good enough to beat us, but we’ve got a lot coming. You’ve got to have some advantage as a defender and that’s one of them, that we’re later on. That’s something we didn’t do right in San Francisco. We got right in Auckland, we got right in Bermuda and hopefully we’ll get it right here.”

America’s Cup key dates

Louis Vuitton Cup round-robin: August 30-September 9

Louis Vuitton Cup semifinals: September 15-20

Youth America’s Cup: September 18-27

Louis Vuitton Cup finals: September 27-October 6

Puig Women’s America’s Cup: October 6-14

Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup match: October 13-22

America’s Cup challengers

Ineos Britannia (UK – Challenger of Record)

Alinghi Red Bull Racing (Switzerland)

Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli (Italy)

New York Yacht Club American Magic (USA)

Orient Express Racing Team (France)

Youth and Women’s America’s Cup teams

America’s Cup teams: New Zealand, UK, Switzerland, Italy, USA, France

Invited teams: Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, Spain

Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.