The INEOS Interviews: Rob Wilson
by Mark Jardine 19 Aug 18:00 BST
Rob Wilson - INEOS Britannia - AC75 - July 2024 - Barcelona © Cameron Gregory
As a sailing coach, Rob Wilson works with the team on the water to help hone their skills in the AC75. How the team sail tactically, and how they control these insanely fast yachts, will be key to winning the America's Cup.
Rob gave us key insights into how he works with the sailors, what is different about sailing at this level, and in boats which are so much quicker than the wind, as well as the learnings from other sports, especially Formula 1.
Mark Jardine: This America's Cup cycle it seems you do not have a single weak team taking part, and the racing looks like it is going to be as close to one-design as you're going to get. Your role, as sailing coach, could be more important than ever.
Rob Wilson: It's true, even from the practice racing and just seeing the teams on the water, it is incredibly close between all the teams out there. For sure, there are teams though you can see in certain conditions will have a slight edge. But I'd say certainly, since Valencia, this is probably the tightest racing that we're going to see.
The tactical side of it is going to be a big part of it. The pre-start is going to be absolutely massive: the advantage you can gain from the pre-start, and the speed difference you need break through. If one boat is putting a tight cover on you, it's quite hard to break through.
So, the pre-start is going to be huge, but there are opportunities on this race course. It can be one-sided in certain conditions, but there are opportunities, for sure. We thought that two or three years ago, with these being second generation boats it's going to be closer.
It's not like last time around where the rule came out relatively late, and it was a real scramble to just understand whether the concept was going to work. We had this funny little Quant 24 that we converted to a flying machine, and we weren't even sure if it was going to work or how difficult it was going to be to fly.
This time around it's all evolved massively. It's the same as with the F50 / AC50 back in Bermuda, or even the AC72s in San Fran before that. First we thought you could foil downwind but you can't foil upwind. Now you're doing dry laps all the time. As the boats evolve, they become a little bit easier to sail, so the racing becomes more and more important. I think that's where we'll be in this Cup.
There are going to be stronger teams and weak teams, and the sea state will favour some teams more than others, but it's going to be tight. It's going to be exciting.
Mark: One of the bizarre things that sailors who aren't doing this kind of sailing need to understand is how wind shadows and areas of disturbed wind - when you're going so much faster than the wind - mean you can recross wind shadows that you've created on a previous leg. How are you visualizing things like that?
Rob: We don't want to give it all away but, for sure, the wind shadows, especially in the pre-starts, are a massive part of it. We certainly look at that quite a bit and learn as much as we can.
The pre-start is massive for the wind shadow part, especially when it's lighter winds, because the wind shadows drift downwind slower and round the course as well. You know, especially on the windward mark exits, it can be a factor.
Mark: Going downwind, people are used to having the wind shadow behind, but in an AC75 you've got the wind shadow in front of you all the time, and that's why a tight cover can be kept by that lead boat. So getting off the start line clean and ahead of your opposition, means the tension ramp-up in those final seconds must be insane.
Rob: You can hear it in a lot of the helm's voices, that the tension goes up and it's not surprising. They're big bits of kit, the closing speeds, especially when you have a dial-up scenario, you can have boats quite easily doing 45 knots, so the closing speeds are 90 knots - that's over 100 miles an hour!
It can be tense for the guys, but that's why they're good at the job, because they're good at dealing with that pressure. Having a seven-ton boat, with closing speeds of 100 miles an hour, and they're having to fly the thing and keep the comms cool and be thinking about the next manoeuvre. It's quite intense, but again, it's a focus area that's really important that we get right.
Mark: You've had a long-term relationship with Ben Ainslie and Giles Scott, and the trust that goes between you all as a unit, making sure that the sailing tactics are nailed, must be massive.
Rob: I think it's really important for the helms, the whole of the sailing team, the whole of the design team and everyone to trust one another. I think when you're doing your own sailing campaign, you pretty much control the whole campaign, don't you? Whether it's a one-person boat or two-person boat, then you have a close support team around you, especially on the Olympic side.
With this boat, and all the design aspects, it's such a big unit that you have to trust people to be expert in their area and deliver and you can't micromanage that.
When it comes to the sailing team, each sailor in the team has an area of responsibility. We'll update and check in on the how those areas are going, but you've got to trust your teammates 100%.
Going back to your original question, with Ben, Giles and Dylan (Fletcher) there is trust, and there has to be trust between us, but the role changes: sometimes you're there as a sounding board, just to bounce ideas off, other times just questioning to get that group expertise out.
So, I think the coaching role changes quite a bit. It's definitely not a 'tell' scenario. You're not going to get anywhere with guys with this amount of experience by being tell, tell, tell. The key is getting the expertise from the whole group, which sometimes takes a bit more time, but then making sure we go in the right direction, summarising it well and pushing forward.
Mark: On days where you've got the boat in the shed the simulator (sim) becomes vital. One of the areas that has to be hugely useful is having single buttons that perform multiple actions. Is that something where you've had a lot of input, especially for pre-start, when many things are having to happen at once?
Rob: In terms of the control side? Yes, and I'm pretty sure all the teams are using their sim to test control features on the boat. You've got four cyclors, you've got trimmer / pilots and two helms - how the teams are dividing up those roles will be subtly different.
You want to minimize the bandwidth that tuning the sails takes up, just getting to VMG trim requires a lot of movements to happen, and if you can use the sim to make that as efficient as possible, then that's a real win. You can get it right in the sim first before experimenting on the water.
Mark: Bandwidth is a real key, as everything is moving so fast. It's not like in a conventional dinghy or yacht where you can ease the downhaul, outhaul and vang separately at the windward mark. You need to make sure that everything goes to that mode for a given wind strength straight away. Is this where the input from Formula 1, and the Mercedes team (where for drivers the bandwidth is similarly limited) has been useful?
Rob: For sure. The learning from the Mercedes Formula 1 team for all the bits and pieces that haven't been in the sailing industry before is crucial. I think it's really healthy to have that crossover and learn from them. We've been looking at other sports as well, where we can learn from them. Also, fighter pilots: how do they deal with the pressure of things happening so fast? What are the key aspects of that, what the key comms?
Learning from Mercedes has been amazing on that control side. In a way they are learning about our world and getting on the same page as us there. But there are those extra golden nuggets of information that we can use that would have taken years and years to find out on our own.