Land Rover has revealed a little detail on exactly how it plans to help Sir Ben Ainslie bring home the America’s Cup to Britain for the first time since the competition’s inception under the reign of Queen Victoria. On the day Ainslie begins practice in Oman for the first of five qualifying races before next year’s 35th America’s Cup in Bermuda, his partners have revealed that his 2017 race boat - code-named R1 - is on schedule for launch two days after Christmas this year, the earliest the Cup's rules will allow.  The R1 will feature a 76ft wing sail designed using the same computation fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation software Jaguar Land Rover uses to design vehicles without the need for a wind tunnel. Land Rover will also help design and optimise the workstations for the four "grinding crew" who will create the hydraulic energy that will control Ainslie’s America’s Cup Challenger. Lastly, Ben Ainslie Racing will plug its intensive testing data into JLR’s vast data processing capability, taking advantage of the latest developments in code to make sense of where the boats - and indeed the crew - are working, and where they’re not.  Meanwhile, in Oman this weekend Ainslie and his crew will set about improving from their third place in the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup World Series (LVACWS), now in its second year. The qualifying race will (in part at least) decide whether it is indeed Land Rover Ben Ainslie Racing and not the New Zealand, Swedish, French or Japanese entries that will attempt to wrestle the trophy from the American team Oracle in Bermuda in June 2017.  “Victory in the World Series is still possible, certainly,” says Ainslie. “It’s still very tight. The Kiwis got a bit of a jump in the last round last year but I think you’ll see some of the newer teams - ourselves, the French and the Japanese - that struggled a bit last year become more competitive now we’ve had more time to prepare and spend more time in the boat.”  After a strong start in the opening round of the 2015/2016 LVACWS in Portsmouth, Ainslie’s team suffered difficult weekends in Gothenburg and Bermuda. “It’s difficult,” says Ainslie. “The teams are focused on the development side for 2017, which is critical. You just have to come away from a World Series event and debrief thoroughly. Some of those issues you will be able to fix off the boat, some you can’t.”  With the World Series boats out of action between events, Ainslie, his sailing crew, shore crew and technical team have been getting to grips with the first prototype for the R1, dubbed the "T2" which launched late last summer. “We put a huge amount of effort into every system on that boat; it’s obviously our first stab at a boat of similar performance to the one we’ll race in 2017,” says Ainslie. “It’s a great learning tool, not only for us on the water in terms of learning to sail it, but in terms of data generation - that’s absolutely critical for the designers - and lastly for the build team. We have more test boats to come and the team can learn from any issues we’ve had on the T2.”  In December a software glitch caused the wing-sail to invert, leaving Ainslie helpless to prevent a slow but safe capsize, one which ultimately damaged the wing beyond use. Repairs to it took until after Christmas, keeping the team off the water. “We’re lucky we’ve had such a mild winter, so we were able to get back on the water as soon as the boat was repaired. Recent testing has gone really well,” says Ainslie.  He has come under fire for not relocating the team to Bermuda, where the defending American team Oracle, among others, are based. “Yes,” says Ainslie. “A lot of people have questioned that. It was a strategic decision we made early on to base ourselves in the UK. That was partly commercial, partly because there is a lot of engineering expertise here we can tap into. The drawback was potential lost days with the weather in the winter but actually, looking at our analysis of the weather in Bermuda, I think we’ve come out with a similar number of sailing days. It can be pretty breezy there too, stuck in the middle of the Atlantic.”  The team also runs its own legacy charity, the 1851 Trust and works with 11th Hour Racing on a rigorous sustainability and marine welfare programme. “We have taken on a lot with the team,” Ainslie says, “but we knew we had this fantastic opportunity with a clean sheet of paper to create something special both with the Trust and the sustainability agenda. The projects will make the team more powerful in terms of what we stand for, in trying to make a difference in the marine community, in Portsmouth… and nationally if we can be successful with this challenge.” This summer will be the first time in 24 years Ainslie has not represented his country at the Olympic Games, but he remains adamant the call he made after winning his last (of four) gold medals at London 2012 was the right one.  Winning the America’s Cup will require four good races in Oman this weekend and the same at the Louis Vuitton World Series races in New York, Chicago, Portsmouth and Toulon, with talk of a sixth event in Tokyo late in the year. It’s entirely possible that Britain has never had a better chance to win back the trophy it lost in the very first race around the Isle of Wight in 1851. It’s huge pressure on 39-year-old Ainslie. Not that pressure has ever been something Ainslie can’t handle. Think back four years and you might even conclude he actively searches it out.
Michael Harvey heads to the Middle East to catch the latest leg of the America's Cup and talk to racing supremo Sir Ben Ainslie