J.P.Morgan BAR skipper Ben Ainslie “Today was a great day on the water for J.P. Morgan BAR, we are half way through this event and we are working well as a team.  The training we’ve put in over the last few weeks is starting to pay off.  The last event often felt like a blur, after rolling straight in from the London Olympics we had little time to prepare and as a team our time together had been limited.  It’s great sailing with this team learning how to improve and sail together, I am lucky to have some really good guys onboard and we all have a lot of respect for each other which I think makes a good team. These boats are all about teamwork and communication. If the communication isn’t there then you soon see how things can unravel on the water. So that’s an area we really wanted to focus on in our training, and hopefully the training is paying off. 

We wanted to progress past Jimmy in the match racing, the start cost us. Right on the line with thirty seconds to go it was touch and go really what was going to work, and I made a mess of that final thirty seconds. Jimmy luffed us on the line, so we went to push over the top which meant we banged into him. That saw us conceded a penalty,  all credit to Jimmy he sailed really well,  we pushed hard for the rest of the race, but  we couldn’t close the gap, Jimmy and his crew did a great job

We then headed into the fleet races, it was important to come back strong, put in a good performance and make both races count. We had a great battle against Terry Hutchinson and his crew onboard Artemis Racing (White) in both races. Terry and I have sailed together a lot in the past when we were at Team New Zealand, he’s also sailing with one of  my best mates Iain Percy so to be honest I was more worried about bragging rights in the bar after with Percy. It was great racing out there, two really close races and some consistent results for us which see us leading overall after four races. However, we can’t take anything for granted and we need to keep building for the rest of the week and make every race count”.

AC World Series San Francisco Fleet Racing Championship (After 4 of 7 races)
1. J.P. Morgan BAR (Ben Ainslie) 1-3-1-2 – 43 points
2. Artemis Racing – White (Terry Hutchinson) 10-2-2-1 – 34
3. Artemis Racing – Red (Nathan Outteridge) 4-4-4-4 – 32
4. ORACLE TEAM USA SPITHILL (Jimmy Spithill) 8-1-6-5 – 29
5. Emirates Team New Zealand (Dean Barker) 2-8-5-6 – 27
6. Energy Team (Loick Peyron) 6-7-7-3 – 25
7. ORACLE TEAM USA COUTTS (Russell Coutts) 3-5-8-7 – 25
8. Luna Rossa Piranha (Chris Draper) 9-6-3-10 – 20
9. Team Korea (Peter Burling) 5-9-10-8 – 16
10. China Team (Phil Robertson) 7-10-11-9 – 11
11. Luna Rossa Swordfish (Iker Martinez) 11-11-9-11 – 6

Match Racing Standings (5th – 11th)
5. ORACLE TEAM USA COUTTS
6. Energy Team
7. J.P. Morgan BAR
8. Team Korea
9. China Team
10. Luna Rossa Piranha
11. Luna Rossa Swordfish