Grant Dalton: Emirates Team New Zealand CEO ahead of the America's Cup final

Team New Zealand will finally return to match racing on Sunday morning when they begin their best-of-13 series against Ineos Britannia in Barcelona. 

The match will be the first competitive racing in a month for Team NZ, who showed some impressive signs in the preliminary regatta and round-robins, before leaving the stage to let the remaining challengers duke it out. 

Ineos Britannia were the last challenger standing after eliminating Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli in the Louis Vuitton Cup final, meaning they’ll be the ones facing off against Team New Zealand. 

CEO Grant Dalton told Mike Hosking that Ineos Britannia will likely be tired coming off their Louis Vuitton Cup win, and they’ll have to be able to put it behind them quickly. 

He said that although there’s a disadvantage in not having raced for a month, they also had the opportunity to develop their boat. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have at last arrived at the real deal. The
America's Cup has a go, Team New Zealand versus Anyos
early Sunday morning our time. It's the first time in
sixty years, by the way, a British shot has been
challenging for the Cup itself. Team New Zealand's Grant Dalton
back with this morning.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Good morning, Mike.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
So, pre regatta, if you believed all the hype it
was going to be you and Lunar Rossa. What did
Aenios do well?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Pre regatta hype included us. Actually, we pretty much expected
it would be Lunar Roster as well, and until the
last race, I still thought it was probably going to
be Lunar Rosa. I think actually Lunarrosi didn't sail very well.
I mean it starts looked a bit not very good,
and when they broke their traveler earlier on in the regatta,

(00:43):
I think they put some structural restraints on the boat
so that they couldn't sheet on in that amount of
breeze quite as much as they would normally. Now that's
just our feeling for it, so that impaired the speed
a little bit. But to be fair to any of
us band through massively through around and I credit that
to first of all the quality of the people, but

(01:04):
also to the connection with Messi's Formula one team and
their ability to diagnose data and make improvement by from
the data.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
So you had been able to see on a screen
on a bit of paper whatever them improving, and where
they've improved, and probably how they've improved.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, we've only got the data from when they race,
and of course unless you've got your own data in
the same time, you've really got no judge. Now we
have a little bit of that, but not a lot,
and we can see that the boats are pretty equal,
and that's no surprise really at this level. You know,
you'd expect the boats, particularly in the second generation of

(01:45):
the at seventy fives, to be quite close. But we've
really only seen them in one condition, in their sort
of fast form, which is in windy conditions. And we're
headed into the weekend. Now back to the more normal,
which is light conditions. And to be fair to learn
a rossa there both looked like it was set up
for the light conditions. You know, you don't want to

(02:06):
be halfway house because you sort of need official foul
and they ended up with really windy conditions, so they're
a bit unlucky in that way too.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Okay, So how much window is there for variability in
conditions on any given day?

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Not a lot, because you know, really the night before,
I mean there's one or two knots. But if it's
going to be misstrou through the Gulf of Lyon or
in the area, then you know it's going to be windy.
And you know that two or three days before, and
we know that there's a mistral that has just left
the area basically over the last twenty four hours, and

(02:41):
now we're going into a lighter period. We're also quite
late in the year, being October, so it's autumn, and
that tends to stop the sea breeze coming in very
strong because the land doesn't heat up as much.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Aniosa's talk of being shagged worn out a lot of
racing taking a lot out of it. Is that real
or is that sort of hype?

Speaker 2 (03:05):
Well, it'll be easy to say it's tight, but they
did have a hell of a series and they will
have taken a little bit out of them. I guess,
having been in this position that position ourselves, you've got
to put the lous Verton cupp as greater than it
is to win it behind you pretty quickly, and remember
that's only just a stepping stone along the way. And

(03:27):
I think we were guilty in two thousand and seven
of winning the Louis Vuton kind of certing for me
on a first try and then really we peek through
the Louis Verton. So although they're very conscious of that
and it's a very obvious thing, it is quite hard
to get up again. Now you look at the clip
side of that point. We haven't raced for the month,

(03:48):
so it's quite hard for us to get up as well.
But I think they will be tired, yes.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
So if you had that was where I was leading.
If you had to choose between having raced and being
tired versus being free not having race, where would you rather.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Be race and being tired and you know race and
niney you're tired and rotating your guys enough to make
sure that you know you're still ready for the Cup.
I mean, there's definitely an advantage with racing because you racing.
Racing training is training. But the flip side of that
is that we get to develop our boat and we
have a different boat marginally different boat than we had

(04:24):
in around Robins that we won. We most definitely have
a faster boat than we had, I think more significantly
from the way I see it is that it was
and it needs to be. This is a much improved
team that attended the Cup in twenty twenty one, a
significantly better team than won the Cup in twenty twenty

(04:44):
one on Auckland. And we'll, you know, let's wait and
see how that goes for us come Saturday. But we'll
need to be sharp too, because these in their tails
are up and you know they're going to be hard
to be with.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
What level of confidence do you go in.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
Crickyx, that's question. I'm confident in the work that we've done.
We're as well prepared as we can be. We're comfortable
with the boat I think as a yachting and now
it's up to the sailors. Right as a sailing team.
We are infinitely better than we were in Auckland. So
my confidence in where we are is as high as

(05:20):
it can be. Whether that translates into actually being quicker
than any of us on the water, I really don't
know yet. We'll find out soon enough.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
I reckon you will go well, we're on your side
and good use of the term criky Dix Grant Dalton
out of Barcelona this morning.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
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