With the Louis Vuitton Cup Final tied at three wins apiece on the morning of the fourth day of racing off Barcelona, and with the wind forecast at or above 20 knots, the riveting race to elimination between Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli and INEOS Britannia had all the makings of a monumental moving day, but after two more races, the series remains deadlocked once again. But a pattern is emerging: the Italians are unflinching and the British imperfect.
There’s also a pattern emerging in the pre-starts. INEOS Britannia appears to prefer to play at the top of the box with the flexibility to either jump or lead on the final approach. In the first race of the day, No. 7 of the series, with INEOS entering on port and Luna Rossa quite late for its starboard entry, the British tacked in the middle of the box as Luna Rossa jibed behind and angled off to the top-right corner of the box. From a windward position, INEOS pursued the Italians from high until Luna Rossa abruptly turned up toward the start. It seemed to catch the British off guard and left them set up to leeward for the final approach.
INEOS has shown in recent races that they can hold a high angle for much longer and more effectively than they could early on during the Preliminary Regattas, which were sailed in much lighter winds. Matching relative speed and height with the Italians, INEOS had momentary control of the race off the left boundary and was able to live on the hip of Luna Rossa as they drag raced to the middle of the course where the Italians were finally able to shed them.
A slight left shift at the top of the course and foil-drop delay on Luna Rossa put the Brits back in front and first through the windward gate by mere seconds as they split to opposite sides. After a heart-racing 51-knot bearaway for INEOS and 41 knots for the Italians, the race for Luna Rossa came to abrupt halt when they lost control of the boat and nosedived.
The impact of water across the deck sheared multiple fairings away, exposing the innards of the jib-sheet system. Unsure of collateral damage, the Italians stopped racing and eventually retired. The British safely delivered their boat around the course to add another to the win column.
Luna Rossa’s technical team was on the boat immediately to inspect and repair, reapplying the fairings with tape and adhesive carbon sheets in a harried 30-minute effort against the clock to get the boat in raceable shape.
Once again, momentum had swung the way of the Brits, but Luna Rossa is resilient if anything, knocking curveballs out the park as they’re known to do. With barely enough time for the cyclors to warm up their legs and reset the boat, the Italians were ready for the next battle like it was no big deal. A pre-start wind delay, caused by a spike that put the wind well above the 21-knot threshold, gave them a few minutes to get sorted, but once the countdown was on, it was business as usual for Jimmy Spithill and his opposite Francesco Bruni.
This time, the British jibed after their starboard entry and chased the Italians toward the top of the starting box. As Luna Rossa began its jibe to its final approach there was a moment of uncertainty on the British boat whether to jibe and follow or tack and set up high. A delayed decision to tack resulted in a rushed maneuver against the start box boundary, and during the tack, INEOS slid across the boundary, earning them a 75-meter penalty to burn.
“We just had an issue which kind of put us out of position for the start,” Ainslie said after racing. “We weren’t where we wanted to be, but in that amount of breeze you can’t just throw the boat around or you’re going to wipe out or break something—so it really put us on the back foot. But we tried really hard, they had a great race and did a good job defending and I thought the performance was pretty similar today with both boats ramping up in that top end.”
With Luna Rossa comfortably enough out front and dictating the race, the no-pass trend continued despite both teams clocking top-mark exits upwards of 55 knots. INEOS made incremental gains at certain points of the race, but once the Italians opened up a sizable lead on Leg 5 of 8, there was nothing they could do to change the outcome.
As the pattern repeats, the Italians continue to rebound from race-ending issues (traveler failure, broken battens, and one heck of a high-speed pearl), and as result, the daily headline rings familiar. It’s all even again, but it’s now at 4-to-4. The Louis Vuitton Cup Final is no longer a race to seven, but a race to three.
