IMPOSSIBLE CHALLENGE?

DOES BRITAIN FINALLY HAVE A SHOT AT THE CUP? HELEN FRETTER TALKS TO INEOS BRITANNIA SKIPPER BEN AINSLIE AND HELMSMAN GILES SCOTT ABOUT WHY THIS TIME, IT'S DIFFERENT

- BEN AINSLIE AND HELMSMAN GILES SCOTT

It’s been dubbed the longest losing streak in sports history: 173 years since America claimed the Hundred Guinea Cup on 20 August, 1851, Britain has never once won the Cup.

AC37 marks 10 years since Sir Ben Ainslie’s first Challenge. This is his third, and the second backed by one of Britain’s richest men, Sir Jim Ratcliffe. But in the Cup world, if you’re not progressing, you’re hurtling backwards compared to your opposition. So what has Ainslie changed for his third tilt at the Auld Mug?

THE F1 COLLAB

“We definitely sat down, took a long, hard look at what didn’t work, and what the opportunities were,” he recalls of the aftermath of AC36. “The F1 relationship was an obvious direction, with Jim and INEOS’s part ownership [of Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1].”

The partnership with Mercedes-AMG Petronas was announced six months after INEOS Britannia and the Royal Yacht Squadron became Challengers of Record.

It clearly took some wrangling to figure out. “I think we’d all agree we probably spent a little bit too much time on that side of things,” admits Ainslie. “We didn’t necessarily have our ducks all in a row.

“When we started out, it was difficult. We had some pretty difficult conversations. Formula 1 is a team of over a couple of thousand people. We were about 150 people in the America’s Cup team. So you end up with very different structures, working practices and acceptable levels of attention to detail. So it’s about trying to find a middle ground. It took us a bit of time to figure that out, but we got there. And it’s been a really, really positive relationship right from the top, up to Toto Wolff [F1 team boss], and the rest of the team really got behind this team and have been fantastic allies for us.”