SPAIN DRIVER DIEGO BOTIN: ‘SAN FRANCISCO WIN WAS A CRUCIAL MOMENT FOR THE TEAM’
Spain’s stunning San Francisco victory over NorthStar Canada and France marked a ‘crucial moment’ for the team and its new status as defending champions, according to driver Diego Botin.
Spain qualified for the three-boat showdown at the top of the fleet racing leaderboard, with 56 points after seven fleet races. This was some way ahead of Giles Scott’s NorthStar Canada in second with 49 points, and Australia in third with 47.
However, the Aussies’ third place finish was impressive given their last place finish in the 7th fleet race following the dramatic collapse of their wing.
Reflecting on the weekend, Botin said the team had had a ‘slow’ start to the season; the team picked up solid 4th and 2nd place results in Dubai and Auckland, but finished 7th in Sydney and 5th in Los Angeles and ‘just couldn’t put everything together,’ in the last two events, Botin said.
He pointed to the quick turnaround between Los Angeles and San Francisco – SailGP’s first time staging events on back to back weekends. “I think we did really well between events in L.A. and in San Francisco,” he said, which resulted in them ‘putting everything together’.
“We started well, we had good boat speed and we made good decisions around the course.”
Wing trimmer Florian Trittel added that the team had been ‘polishing many things’ and been ‘on a rollercoaster’. “We managed to have a really solid second day and that’s the biggest positive for us,” he said.
But he described the victory was ‘bittersweet’ due to the collapse of the Australian wing in the last fleet race of the event.
“We would like to send huge energy from the Spanish team to the Aussie team,” he said. “We could hear it through the comms even though we had noise cancelling on, so it must have been a massive one and seeing that is never nice.”
Spain’s win now means there have been five different winners of the first five events of the 2025 Season; New Zealand in Dubai, Australia in Auckland, Emirates GBR in Sydney, NorthStar Canada in L.A. and Spain in San Francisco.
The F50 fleet will next go to battle on May 3/4 at SailGP’s first ever South American event; the Enel Rio Sail Grand Prix.
