America's Cup World Series – Land Rover BAR in solid position on day 1

by Land Rover BAR on 30 Aug 2015 2015 America's Cup World Series – The waters of Gothenburg supplied almost perfect racing conditions for the first day of the series hosted in the Swedish city. The Land Rover BAR team produced another great performance to take two second places, only bettered by Oracle Team USA – who won both – with Emirates Team New Zealand completing the podium on both occasions.

An incredibly tight race course with rocks everywhere meant the five lap races were done in less than 30 minutes, and led to plenty of place changes. On both occasions the team looked rock solid in their speed and boat handling in the medium conditions, and with double points at stake on Super Sunday tomorrow, the event is still wide open.

Overall thoughts on the day

Tactician, Giles Scott: 'Today was particularly physical because we were on the Code Zero cross-over so the decision whether to hoist and deploy that was crucial. As soon as we make that call to do it, it saps a lot of energy out of the front three. In the last race of the day to be able to get that call right was pretty vital for us in grabbing that second place – but for sure it was hard work.'

Jib Trimmer, Nick Hutton: 'We had a super physical day out there today, we were wearing heart rate monitors, and my average was 144 beats per minute, over two hours and 20 minutes. That's from when we hoisted the jib to when we dropped it at the end of the day, with a peak of 185. So that's a pretty big day, a very short course, with lots of obstacles, islands and rocks. But we're quite happy with how we managed to sail back through the fleet, and I think a lot of that comes down to our fitness and how we can keep pushing when we are running at that level of intensity for so long.'

Race One

Tactician, Giles Scott on being the first boat to go left upwind on the first beat of the first race; making significant gains and setting a pattern that everyone else would eventually follow, but not before the team had gone from fourth to second: 'We had a good look at the course before the race, and we thought there would be gains to go up the left, so that was our default plan – when we were behind we had to 'freestyle' a little bit, but left was our Plan A.'

Race Two

Skipper and Team Principal Ben Ainslie: 'It was a tough course today, it's about trying to weigh up whether or not you can get past the rocks with the wind that you have. We did a really good job of that, we had one issue in the second race which cost us a lot of ground, but that was the only time that we really got the wrong side of that balance between the rocks and the right wind.'

Jib Trimmer, Nick Hutton: 'We got past the Kiwis on the final leg, we had the Code 0 ready to go. We approached the mark on port, knowing that they didn't have the option, they didn't have it plugged in. So we gybed and deployed onto that sail, and because we had sailed a shorter distance managed to pass them coming down the last leg into the finish.'

The Louis Vuitton America's Cup World Series racing continues tomorrow at 1.10pm with double points 'super Sunday'. Watch the action live from Gothenburg on BT Sport Europe, 11:30 - 1345.

Results - Day one, two races
1. ORACLE TEAM USA 20
2. Land Rover BAR 18
3. Emirates Team New Zealand 16
4. SoftBank Team Japan 13
5. Artemis Racing 12
6. Groupama Team France 11

Land Rover BAR Gothenburg line up:
Ben Ainslie - Skipper and Team Principal
Paul Campbell-James - Wing trimmer
David 'Freddie' Carr - Runner
Nick Hutton - Trimmer
Giles Scott - Bow/tactician
Andy Mclean - Race crew reserve
Jo Lees - Boat Captain
Richy O'Farrell - Shore support
James Chapman – Rib driver and Shore support
Ian Boag - Shore support