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The America’s Cup has long been at the cutting edge of yacht racing and we’ve seen incredible development over the last decade or so and a lot of that has to do with Dan Bernasconi. Dan is head designer at Emirates Team New Zealand and played a large hand in things like the evolution of foiling in the America’s Cup, the use of cyclors on Team New Zealand’s boat for the Bermuda campaign in 2017 as well as the design of the AC75 monohulls used in the last edition in Auckland.
Dan’s route to the America’s Cup came via Formula 1, and he talks about the six years he spent with McLaren when they were at the top of the tree, how he then got into the sailing game and how he approaches boat design. He also delves into some of the major developments he’s been behind, the team’s thinking around when to reveal to rival teams some of the latest innovations they’ve been working on and what it’s like when some of the radical design features come off.
