SailGP: Peter Burling ‘blown away’ by costly penalty as New Zealand SailGP Team struggle in Los Angeles

The New Zealand SailGP Team made a rough start to their event in Los Angeles. Photo / Felix Diemer, SailGP

Peter Burling has implored SailGP umpires to “have a little look at themselves” after the New Zealand SailGP Team was handed a costly penalty on the opening day of racing in Los Angeles.

Midway through the second fleet race of the event’s opening day on Sunday, Burling and his Kiwi crew were penalised for not giving Jimmy Spithill’s USA team enough room around the gate and were forced to fall back behind the American crew.

That saw them forced to drop from second to fifth and ultimately ruined what had been a good race until that point.

The penalty itself was an innocuous one and Burling vented his frustrations after the day’s racing.

“Personally, I’m blown away as to how we got a penalty in that situation,” he said. “I actually talked to Jimmy afterwards – who our penalty was against – and he didn’t even know it was on us.

“I think the umpires need to have a little look at themselves after that as to just how they make decisions going forward.”

The Kiwis finished fifth in a race in which they could have been challenging for the lead. They dropped valuable points on an opening day that didn’t go right for them.

They plummeted from the highs of their event win in Chicago to open their campaign last month, ending the first day in LA sitting seventh on the event leaderboard, finishing fourth, fifth and 10th in the day’s fleet races.

The day ended on a sour note for the current series leaders, finishing last in the newly extended 10-boat fleet and able to sail on their foils for just 26 per cent of the race.

“We found the first two races pretty nice, to be honest,” Burling said. “It was a tight racetrack, like we knew it was going to be, but you had enough wind to foil around and if you made good decisions you went forwards. If you didn’t, you went backwards.

“We ended up off the back of the train in the last one, trying to take a bit too much of a risk with that first reach, trying to get foiling, and didn’t quite manage it, so that was a pretty tough race for us.”

They will go into the second day of the competition on Monday morning (NZ time) 10 points adrift of a spot in the podium race, with just two more fleet races in which to make up those points.

It was a day on which the bad offset the good for the Kiwis. After finding themselves shuffled out to the back of the fleet at the starting line in the day’s opener, Burling and his crew showed exactly why they are tipped as one of the teams to beat this year.

With the issues moving through the fleet that once plagued the team long behind them and continuity in their sailing team, the Kiwis have become one of the most consistent outfits on the water in terms of performance and boat speed, and went about their work to recover from their slow start.

It didn’t take long. By the halfway mark of the first race they had climbed from 10th to fourth, and they battled against Phil Robertson’s Canadian team to hold on to that spot at the finish line.

It looked like that had set them up well when the next race began; the Kiwis made a better start and were contesting the race with the frontrunners.

While they looked to have got stuck in a little bit of dirty air from the Denmark team, who led the way around the first marker, the Kiwis raced in fourth place for much of the opening two legs. It was a much tighter affair; New Zealand looked to be edging into the lead midway through the race but the penalty proved to be disastrous.

With proximity penalties requiring the infringing team to give the position back to the other crew, New Zealand had to drop back behind the USA, who were sailing in fourth.

The Kiwis went on to finish fifth in a race that could have offered so much more.

Towards the back end of the second race, the wind began to drop away and those finishing late in the race struggled to stay on their foils.

That was the way the final race played out. Again, the Kiwis were shuffled towards the back of the fleet after getting stuck out wide on the starting line, and they didn’t recover from there, sailing alone at the back of the pack.