Why SailGP has produced the best racing Jimmy Spithill has seen in his career

Jimmy Spithill is in his second season competing with the USA SailGP team. Photo / David Gray, SailGP

Jimmy Spithill is no stranger to fierce competition.

He’s been on both sides of the result in the America’s Cup match, including being at the helm for one of the event’s most memorable comebacks, has won world championships, and triumphed in the famed Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

But as far as the best racing of his career goes, he has found that leading the United States in SailGP.

While the America’s Cup is sailing’s most well-known competition - and the arena in which Sptihill shot to fame - a major element in the four-yearly event is the design of the boat. Each team designs their own boat based on a set of regulations, and the design of the vessel goes a long way in how well a team is placed to contend for the Auld Mug.

In SailGP, that element is taken away. Instead, the nine-strong fleet all sail on F50 foiling catamarans which are all built at the SailGP Technologies headquarters in Warkworth. Each boat is built with the same design, meaning the teams get an identical product to race.

That, coupled with the league attracting some of the biggest names in the sport and the fact all nine entries take to the starting line together for each race, has seen SailGP develop into an arena of intense competition where the only thing to separate the teams is the ability of the sailors.

“The America’s Cup is clearly a technology race and really a design race,” Spithill told the Herald. “You’re making sure you’re really after boat speed but, as we showed in New Zealand, you’ve got to be able to also get out there and race.

“That’s where with SailGP, there is nothing better from a race perspective than SailGP because everyone’s got the same equipment, it’s the very best teams going head-to-head - it’s the best racing I’ve ever seen in my career.”

The worldwide foiling league makes its debut in New Zealand this weekend for the penultimate event of its third season, hitting the water on Lyttelton Harbour on Saturday and Sunday.

Spithill, who took over at the helm of the US entry last season, said the composition of the races - being full fleet races with nine boats fighting for position in the starting box - adds to the demand of the sailors on board, as tactics and execution become more important; one mistake and a team usually finds themselves at the back of the fleet in a hurry.

“In this fleet, you can only be full throttle. You can’t just take it easy and be conservative because you just get spat out the back,” he said.

With the boats travelling at high speeds and often little separating the teams, SailGP has taken a hard stance on penalty points for collisions. Spithill has drawn the ire of the referees for contact with an opposition vessel this season - as have the New Zealand team. The two have each forfeited four points on the season leaderboard due to being judged in the wrong when they made contact with another boat.

Sitting sixth on the ladder, Spithill’s USA team are still a mathematical chance of making the top three come season’s end and earning a spot in the US$1m race, but he said it was not a situation of ‘win at all costs’, given how much carnage can be caused if the vessels collided at full speed.

“You’ve got to be standing at the end of the race.

“It’s that fine edge of really pushing hard but not going too far that you make a mistake in terms of a capsize - or, even worse, losing season points.

“You look at F1 and Moto GP and where they’re pushing very, very hard. But you’ve got to make it through; there’s no point getting into a situation where you could really risk something and the outcome could be ‘Well, that’s it. Now, you’re out for the weekend and potentially losing season points.’”