SailGP: Black Foils maintain top three championship position despite tough finish in Geneva
by Ben Mackey - Black Foils 23 Sep 11:23 NZST
New Zealand SailGP Team,during a practice session ahead of the Rolex Switzerland Sail Grand Prix - Geneva - September 19, 2025 © Ricardo Pinto/SailGP
A day of mixed conditions and tight three-up racing has seen the Black Foils record an eighth place finish at the Rolex Switzerland Grand Prix, Geneva.
Despite that result the team still sits inside a tightly contested top three on the Rolex SailGP Championship leaderboard in a post-event reshuffle that sees the Bonds Flying Roos return to the top spot with Emirates Great Britain in second. Just three points separate the top three teams as the race continues for November's Grand Final in Abu Dhabi with just one European event remaining.
Sunday conditions allowed for only two fleet races and the team weren't able to accumulate enough points from both races with results of fifth and tenth to make the final.
Black Foils Co-CEO and Driver Peter Burling said it was a challenging day with tight margins.
"It was a super tricky day for us. It felt like we actually got off to a pretty good start, but then just made a couple of decisions on the racetrack that put us to the back. The points were super close—anything could have happened in that last race. I know we will go away now and look at what else we could've done and reflect on our decisions and execution during the race."
Burling said the team were already looking forward to the chance to improve on the performance in Spain.
"It's great to be back in action so soon. We will review how things went here but we will quickly turn our attention to preparing for Cádiz. It's a venue we've been to before and so have material to learn from as we get ready for two weeks' time. We know we weren't where we wanted to be for the Geneva event and we will be looking to get back to that level in Spain."