00:00SailGP Insights takes a data lab to every Sail Grand Prix.
00:05This lab conceals the best kept secrets of SailGP's fleet.
00:10This room receives data from 1,300 sensors placed on board the F-50s.
00:18Teams can see each other's data,
00:21but only those who know what to look for will find the key to success.
00:26The best sailors in the world know this room as the Grand Prix Vault.
00:37And it's Peter Berling and the Kiwis who win the Singapore Sail Grand Prix.
00:42There was a risk of thunderstorms all week,
00:45but luckily we've had no incidents during the racing.
00:56The end of the Singapore River, the Kiwi boat, gets struck by lightning.
01:04The boat was within SailGP's control,
01:06it got struck by lightning on the commute home.
01:10You couldn't boot anything up, but you could tell
01:13that a lot of current had passed through the boat,
01:15and even that kind of smell of burning plastic and resin.
01:19So that all went back to New Zealand to be refurbished.
01:27All the components were replaced, repaired, and put back on the boat.
01:33New Zealand got their boat back after complete refit of everything.
01:36All the electronics had to be changed.
01:38A lot of the hydraulics had to be changed.
01:40It's the Kiwis' first sail with their boat, Amakura, since the lightning catastrophe.
01:52There's been a lot of work to fix her.
01:54Let's hope she sails well today.
01:57Need for an early tank, do you reckon?
01:59Not mine, Eddie.
02:01And then it goes out of the water.
02:03This mysterious, recently struck by lightning boat.
02:07And that's where you can say it all went bad, or it all went well, in fact, for the Kiwis.
02:17I'm on it.
02:18Look at the Kiwis go.
02:19There's so much speed.
02:20They're taking these corners so fast.
02:23They are smashing the whole fleet.
02:31Wow, and again, look at the cornering speeds.
02:34The Kiwis are in a league of their own.
02:36They were turning the boat hard, and the safety factor was not coming into play.
02:44Giving them an advantage on the next leg for the next couple of meters.
02:49A few teams were the first to notice, not even us.
02:59They said there's a big difference.
03:01We looked back at the footage and we said, wow, there is a massive difference.
03:04We're talking meters.
03:05The speed difference between the Kiwis and the rest is just unbelievable.
03:10Take from it what you will, but to not put your hand up and say, or to see the data was so...
03:16The difference between all the boats and the fleet was a bit like, well...
03:19And afterwards, there's an investigation.
03:33I don't think it's much to do with the handling.
03:39I think it's something else was happening.
03:41Something else, not to know who or what, but something was going on there.
03:45And it was pretty clear, I think.
03:47Okay, data's coming in.
03:52The foil can move under the boat or outside the boat.
03:56Now, the further it is outboard, so away from the centre of the boat,
04:00it is essentially making the boat wider.
04:04Now the wider the boat, you're getting more power out of the boat.
04:08So, when you're doing a turn, you want the foil to be nice and outboard, super grippy,
04:17and that way you don't slide sideways when you go around the mark.
04:20Through the wind, oh, it was an aggressive move.
04:23Kiwis are pushing it so hard, but a big mistake by Australia.
04:27But there's a limiting factor.
04:29This is where it gets complicated, right?
04:32It's like act two.
04:33The boats have this mechanism where if the boat is turned up too fast,
04:40or is foiling too high as it's turning,
04:43the board that sticks down in the water could break.
04:47Or the mechanism that holds the board in could break.
04:50Something here could break.
04:52So, this is a section of the F-50 that sits in the daggerboard case,
04:57and it controls the hydraulics that move the foil, essentially.
05:02It's just on the way, all good.
05:04The reason it's there is to protect the hydraulics
05:06and the structural integrity of the boat.
05:08Little hot mode.
05:09Oh, it's giant, should be crossing.
05:11Now, these things here are sensors,
05:14and they are to sense how much pressure is on the foil.
05:18When these sensors can see that there is too much pressure on the foil,
05:22it then releases hydraulic oil out of here,
05:27and then the board will move automatically.
05:30And the data fairies, or the gremlins, I know depending on which team you are,
05:46figure out what's happened in the technology.
05:49OK, disabled.
05:52Happy there?
05:53Yep.
05:54All good.
05:55And I am 12 and a half.
05:5913.
06:00Now we know in F-50s that every boat is identical.
06:03Here, we've got this line, which is to check that nobody has tampered with the system.
06:09And we have this nut as well.
06:11So this nut is set at a number that the pressure will expel, and that is 500.
06:17Now, if this isn't set properly, there may be a difference from boat to boat.
06:22In the right position.
06:23Yeah.
06:24No dagger boards.
06:25That mechanism was sort of overridden.
06:29This was set wrong for the New Zealand boat.
06:32Now, how does that happen when it's managed by the same people?
06:35500.
06:36Yeah, copy that.
06:37Confirm that all boats have been calibrated, have been weighed,
06:41and 100% ready to go sailing.
06:43So I'm happy for them to hit the water.
06:45Over.
06:48We make every boat absolutely identical,
06:51so that the difference is the sailors, not the boats.
06:55It removes the chances of the teams actually creating an advantage
07:00through customising their own platform.
07:03Look how clustered they are.
07:06So as soon as there is an inkling that, you know,
07:09maybe somebody's pushing the rules.
07:11Maybe somebody's cheating on purpose to get more performance out of their boat.
07:14This is serious, and Russell Cootes knows that,
07:18and he knows that we need to get to the bottom of this as fast as possible
07:21because this cannot be happening in Sail GP.
07:24The safety equipment had to be tampered with
07:39in order to get the boat out of the water in Singapore,
07:42and it looks like it hadn't been set to the right setting
07:46when the boat got back to Christchurch.
07:48Who did the overruling?
07:53Was it actually someone on the Kiwi team that tampered?
07:56Was it this lightning strike in Singapore?
08:02You know, we felt a massive amount of frustration
08:04that we were getting the finger pointed at us
08:06for adjusting something which we'd never do.
08:09Like every day, we trust the tech team
08:12to put our boat in a safe working condition.
08:16No one really had a clear answer as to who had adjusted our boat.
08:21The tech team of Sail GP should have done a better job
08:24to make sure that the fleet was more evenly competitive with the settings.
08:31I don't think it's acceptable for the league
08:33to send you out there with unsafe equipment.
08:35That relief valve's probably one of the more critical things on the boat
08:38for keeping us athletes safe out there.
08:44After that incident, we introduced scrutineering.
08:47So we've got two types of scrutineering.
08:49We've got scrutineering that runs in real time
08:52that checks that would pick up issues like this.
08:54So if there's a mistake or somebody had manipulated the system.
08:57And then we also have larger sweeps that run afterwards
09:00through all the data automatically.
09:02It just goes to show how everybody's so keen on the data
09:05and using it all the time
09:07to make sure that they've got the same advantage as everybody else.
09:14You know, from my point of view,
09:15it was just a bizarre way to build up to the final
09:18where you were getting the finger pointed at you
09:20for something you didn't even know which valve it was
09:23until the investigation started.
09:25And frankly, you wouldn't even be interested in changing it if you did.
09:32Don't you see it.
09:33I don't know.
09:46Don't you see it?
09:47Don't you see it.
09:48Don't you see it?
09:49Don't you see one of the things that has been done.
09:50I don't know, but it's pretty incredible.
09:52It's the most popular thing, but you know.
09:54It's like the most popular thing.
09:56You know where it was,
09:57you know,
09:58that that's kinda of our way.
