Orient Express Racing Team is ready for the challenge ahead: Louis Vuitton Cup Round Robin
by Orient Express Racing Team 28 Aug 16:37 BST
Orient Express Racing Team © Orient Express Racing Team
Orient Express Racing Team head into the Louis Vuitton Cup knowing how much they have already achieved, and completely aware of what they now have to accomplish.
The French challengers for the Louis Vuitton 37th America's Cup Barcelona face their first test tomorrow — Thursday 29 August — with the opening match race of the double Round Robin stage when they take on the Swiss team's Alinghi Red Bull Racing. They will also race the Italian challenger Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli in the final match of the opening day.
It promises to be an intense first round of the knock-out Louis Vuitton Cup when each challenger will race each other twice, with four of the five contenders then progressing to the Semi Final.
"We have to be aware of where we have come from and especially where we can get to. We can go far if everything aligns well," said Thierry Douillard, coach to the Orient Express Racing Team race crew.
"The team spirit is solid, so we need to focus on pure performance, and there are so many aspects of the boat, so many parameters and so many departments of the team involved, that although it is eight sailors on that boat, the whole team is onboard with them."
The Orient Express Racing Team's AC75 showed great potential in the recent Louis Vuitton Preliminary Regatta, and the crew had seized the opportunity to develop their understanding of the high-tech foiling yacht which they sailed for the first time in June.
"We have been learning the right settings and in parallel how to optimise our manoeuvres,' said Douillard.
"It sounds simple saying it like that, but it is extremely complex because these are very sophisticated systems and you need to have the right analysis of a situation to know whether the manoeuvre can be achieved, or whether it needs to be adapted, it's a trade-off that is not easy."
A particular area of focus has been the critical pre-start phase at the beginning of every match race. As Douillard explains: "We are very late compared to our fellow challengers, we are playing catch-up, so there are a lot of things to learn very quickly and for sure, from a pure racing point of view, we have not been able to dedicate much training time to the pre-starts. We have been very occupied getting the boat working in every sense of the word: mechanically, electronically, hydraulically.
"We knew we would be in deficit during the Preliminary Regatta in terms of our starts, possibly more so than we anticipated. But we have worked on this area and have progressed well - now we have to put our learnings into practice."
Orient Express Racing Team finished tied with Alinghi Red Bull Racing — their first opponent — at the bottom of the Preliminary Regatta table, both on one point.
Skipper and pilot Quentin Delapierre and his crew — co-pilot Kevin Peponnet, trimmers Jason Saunders and Matthieu Vandamme, and the powerhouse cyclor squad, four in each race, of Timothé Lapauw, Olivier Herlédant, Antoine Nougarède, Germain Chardin, Maxime Guyon, François Pervis, and brothers Rémi and Thibaut Verhoeven — know there is all to play for in the waters off Barcelona.