The America’s Cup is a waiting game, and on the exit of the Bay of Palma in Mallorca a 40-foot sailing boat is bobbing up and down in the water.
Any further out to sea and contact will be lost with the design team back at the Brackley headquarters of Mercedes, from which the Formula 1 team has won eight constructors’ titles and guided Lewis Hamilton to six of his drivers’ crowns.
For this Cup campaign, 60 Mercedes staff have been moved across to work with INEOS Britannia, Ben Ainslie’s third attempt at winning sport’s oldest trophy for Britain for the first time in the event’s 172-year history.
One minute the crew of four are sitting passing round snacks and drinks, the next they are attempting to fly across the water. Towed along by a speedboat in order to give them the sufficient speed to foil, there are a series of false dawns before they’re flying.
The team’s Cup test boat is being put through its paces to see how it reacts as the waves get choppier.
In adjoining vessels, laptops are open poring over live data, so too back on shore in a double decker of shipping containers and at the Brackley based where many of INEOS Britannia’s own design team are based.
For such an old sporting trophy, it is all very cutting edge, sensors attached to every part of the boat to see how it reacts to any given eventuality. While the racing doesn’t begin in earnest until August 2024 in Barcelona, Ainslie and his team are in an even more crucial race against time.
As the four-time Olympic champion puts it: “The next few weeks is where we make a lot of the key decisions on the boat. We’re getting to the business end particularly with the design side. These decisions will ultimately decide the success or failure of the campaign. You take a wrong turn here and we’re in a lot of trouble.”
If Ainslie is feeling the pressure, it isn’t showing. The atmosphere is one of calm and confidence and he prefers to talk about responsibility rather than pressure.
It is a responsibility which comes via daily reminders on the Ineos Whatsapp group in which he is a key member. Others include Britain’s richest man, Jim Ratcliffe, who agreed to bankroll Ainslie’s America’s Cup campaign over drinks. He likes to call it the most expensive gin and tonic he has ever had.
Also popping up with messages is INEOS Grenadiers cycling boss Dave Brailsford and Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff. That quartet regularly meet in Monaco where all but Ainslie have homes.
“It’s an incredible opportunity to learn off each other,” says Ainslie. “And there’s an added responsibility when partnered with an eight-time title-winning F1 team. You need to step up and not let the side down. But that’s good, we want to operate at that level as a sporting team and business.”
On the eventual America’s Cup boat will be positioned cyclors, static cyclists who provide pedal power to generate the hydraulic pressure to drive the foiling boats.
Among those is former Olympic rowing champion Matt Gotrel, a teenage sailor in the GB Olympic set-up who has gone back to his first sporting love. While in Mallorca, it is not uncommon for him and other cyclors to ride out with the INEOS Grenadiers star-studded cycling line-up, including former Tour de France winner Geraint Thomas. He can keep up until they go uphill.
A trained engineer, who worked for Rolls Royce, the America’s Cup marries his athletic, engineering and sailing expertise.
There are parallels to the rowing and a dance with what he calls the red line. “You’ve got to find that red line and stay on it and keep cognitive. With this, you have to stay on the red line but do other things like controlling elements of the boat. In races of up to half an hour, you have to learn where the limit is.”
The 33-year-old appears to have a near-addiction to the pain and suffering required either on board or else in the saddle of the old bike of former world champion Filippo Ganna. Being strapped into his pedals going fast on a boat takes some getting used to.
“It’s like going from 2D to 3D, there’s suddenly this added dimension,” he says. “It’s like standing on a bouncy castle while trying to sail essentially.”
Ainslie has an America’s Cup win to his name, not as skipper but as a key member of Team Oracle USA who pulled off a remarkable comeback to win in 2013. As a skipper, he has lost out in his first two attempts.
Reflecting, he said: “It’s always tough when you don’t reach your targets in any sport or walk of life. You don’t jack it in because things haven’t gone your way. You persevere, keep pushing and keep learning.
“This is one of the toughest challenges in sport and we’re going to keep going until we get the job done. Hopefully that’ll be this time.”
