Energy Team into quarter final of America's Cup World Series

by Pierre Giboire on 13 Aug 2011 The America's Cup World Series Match Race has now witnessed Energy Team make it into the quarter finals in which they will take on the Swedish Artemis Racing team in an attempt to qualify for the semi-finals in Cascais.

At the end of the three races run this Friday in Cascais, the French challenger led by the Peyron brothers ended up in sixth position in the overall rankings, which means they have qualified for the final phase. It is in fact the top six teams that will be doing battle tomorrow in the quarter, semi-finals and final to determine the winner of the Cascais AC Match Race. Loïck and Bruno Peyron give us their view of the state of play.

Loïck Peyron: 'We’re within the target we gave ourselves for this second phase of the AC World Series in Cascais ending up in the top six. The goal was modest, but it was hard to imagine after just ten days of training that we could pose a serious threat to the big teams, who have been out there training for more than six months. Ending up in sixth place means we qualify for the quarter finals, which are due to take place tomorrow and where we will meet Terry Hutchinson’s men on Artemis at 2 p.m. He is a very tricky customer, and they have been sailing together for six months, so have a lot of experience, but this is match racing, so anything can happen. We’ll be out on the water tomorrow showing determination and believing in ourselves.'

Bruno Peyron: 'The fleet selection process was fairly spectacular. There were some good things and some things that were not quite as good. To be honest, we weren’t as good today as on the first few days and showed less strokes of genius than at the start of the week. We remain in second place among the newcomers along with Chris Draper’s Koreans, who were better than us. So we are we deserve to be and not better than that. The whole team is analysing these results thoroughly, but we have shown we have a strong potential, even if we are well aware that there is a lot of work left to do.'

Energy Team website
America's Cup World Series website