Nah.
They were bearing away all the time (as shown by their boat speed dropping all the time, the overhead video and the fact that Bruno was calling “down down” the whole time) to try and force the penalty – you can’t do that…. If you change course you have to give the other boat room.

16.1.
When a right-of-way boat changes course, she shall give the other boat room to keep clear.

The judge boat was right behind LR the whole time and saw what they were doing – they made their decision in approx 2 seconds…. It was clear to them. Ken Read never thought it was a penalty either.

From Ineos’ point of view they would have known they would cross the whole time – it’s not difficult to tell.

Close but no cigar.

That’s exactly the point… it was a series of last second manoeuvres.
They changed course continuously…. Each time they changed course they needed to give ineos space.

If they’d done one bigger course change earlier on and stuck with that they may have had an arguement – but they didn’t they just kept bearing away to try and get in the right place.
The “Hollywood” thing is the dramatic heading up at the end to make it look like they averted a disaster (of their own making).

The reality is that Ineos knew they’d cross (although it was close) the whole time.

It’s team NZ’s local waters. Gives them a bit more advantage.

Whoever goes through will have loads of up to date race prep, and boat prep, they will be race proven and fired right up

The same could be true of the Prada Cup semi-final; whoever wins that will be in the same position re the final.

It’s team NZ’s local waters.

There was quite a row about using courses B & C, the ones closest to the harbour. If I remember right, NZ wanted them used just for the Cup, so that the Challenger wouldn’t be familiar with them. Luna Rossa got a judgement that the same courses had to be used for Prada Cup and America’s Cup, and were criticised because it was said that it would mean the further away courses would get used and it would be worse for spectators. Not sure how it was resolved, as they’ve been using them.

Cheers, thanks for the background info.

All the ‘Expert” chat on tv commentary was that having 2 weeks of boat development was much better than 2 weeks of racing. Whilst the 3 challengers are racing, ETNZ have been quietly developing, practicing and strategising.

Does that not give the challenger, hopefully Britannia 🇬🇧 a good advantage?

Looking at the results from the last dozen or so events (since Australia won it back in the 80s), it’s been fairly evenly split between the defenders winning it and the challengers taking it off them. There used to be multiple American clubs challenging to be the defenders, but NZ changed that and focused on a single defence campaign. Mathematically, you would expect a competitive challenger series with multiple teams to be favoured because you are choosing the fastest boat/best crew from several, whereas the defenders really need to get everything perfect with one boat. However, the defenders have the opportunity to see what the challengers are doing and adjust accordingly. The defenders have two boats, so they can compare boat speed in different conditions in testing, whereas the challengers have to show their real boat speed because they are racing competitively.

Ineos seem to be have a very small advantage over the other defenders, but it’s so close that a single mistake or gear breakage would be enough to make the difference. If Ineos have a 60% chance of winning the challengers’ final, the other two have a 40% chance between them. Then, if the challenging team have a modest advantage over the defenders, there’s still maybe a 35% chance of NZ retaining the cup because of local knowledge, gear breakages, etc. That would still only give Ineos a 45% chance of winning if their boat is quite a bit better than the others, with the other two challengers a 20% chance between them. Those are just wild guesses, but the point is that having a small speed advantage still doesn’t make you strong favourites when there are multiple competitors and lots of ways to get unlucky.

And if it is GB, I think you’d struggle to think of 2 better people to have in charge than Ben Ainslie and Giles Scott

I wonder if the cunningham was part of the story in the final port/starboard crossing. From the stats on the video, Ineos were 80-90m ahead at the previous gybe, and holding that, so would be expected to cross well clear. Then LR started bearing away, their VMG went up and Ineos’s lead started dropping – they may have known that they couldn’t afford to bear away because of the cunningham, which LR knew they had a problem with. The lead at the crossing was 28m, which I think is good evidence that they weren’t (quite) on a collision course – still 5m away from being overlapped.

I wonder if the cunningham was part of the story in the final port/starboard crossing. From the stats on the video, Ineos were 80-90m ahead at the previous gybe, and holding that, so would be expected to cross well clear.

Absolutely – I believe that a 100% fit Ineos would have pulled away on all the downwind legs (assuming they went the right way) as per the previous race. GS said on a Team Ineos video after the race that that’s what they would have normally expected.
Their racing rules advisor (who was conducting the interview) dismissed the subject of the final pass pretty quickly saying that, although close, there wasn’t ever a case for a penalty.

Then LR started bearing away, their VMG went up

Only for a few seconds as their speed was dropping as they bore away, so their VMG would have very quickly dropped accordingly.

On that last cross, both teams called a power mode, which commentators said was less effective on Rita due to the Cunningham issue.

As their cunningham was nailed on at about 70% the main was flatter than it would have normally been so they had to sail high to match the foil shape of the sail – this would have given them a lower VMG.

I would expect that a working cunningham ram would have been eased to give a fuller main and more power allowing them to sail lower faster (and therefore further ahead of LR).

See my last paragraph.
More power doesn’t necessarily mean faster – but it does mean more power with which to sail lower (thus pointing closer to the mark which = less distance to sail/better VMG).
But if you sail too low then your speed drops too much and your VMG suffers.

Downwind performance is a balance between speed and angle to the mark. I race in a mixed dinghy class where there are asymmetric boats that go much faster than my Finn – but they have to sail big angles downwind to get that speed while the Finn can almost be pointed at the mark thus sailing less distance.
If the fast boats don’t get their angles right then they effectively lose time.

Not this…

Unless there a risk balance, ie, absolute max speed involves a risk of losing control.

Edit:
Below is an example of a set of polars – which is a diagramatic view of a hulls’ theoretical speed at all wind angles and wind speeds. When keelboat racing we work with these to check that we’re basically doing stuff right – amazingly there’s many occasions when we’re actually going too fast, which means that we should be heading further downwind (if going downwind) to improve our VMG.

Pretty much – downwind is a balancing act between boat speed and angle to the mark.
Sail shape is very important for ANY boat though!!

Although the AC75’s generally don’t have to take into account things like sea state (i.e. deeper foil profile to generate more power to get through bigger/choppier waves when going upwind but flatter profile to give better pointing/higher speed in flat water)

You’d have to imagine it will take a few days to get it finely tuned and at full whack. Will it be too late? I haven’t seen predicted conditions for Friday yet.

Will it be too late?

They’ve got a big task ahead thats for sure….. I’m doubtful – they weren’t that good before the crash.

That’s a nice touch.

It’s interesting that each team only has one boat and no racing practice between the teams is allowed. I ETNZ aren’t destroying their opposition with speed then they will struggle. All 3 challenger skippers have a better match racing pedigree.

I bet the Americans thought that their place against ETNZ was nailed on before Xmas.

Just shows huh!

Looking forward to the races when I wake up tomorrow. If AM don’t win both races tomorrow I think they are toast as the winds are going to get lighter.