Redemption
Doug DeVos’s Quantum Racing team exorcised memories of a disappointing third overall last year when they clinched top honours at the first event of the highly anticipated 2018 52 Super Series.
28 May 2018
Advertisement
Lead by Terry Hutchinson with Dean Barker on the helm, Quantum Racing closed out the regatta title on Croatia’s beautiful Dalmatian Coast with a seventh in an eventful final light wind race to win by five points over Platoon, the team which were second overall last year. Reigning season champions Azzurra, winners of the warm up PalmaVela regatta finished fourth.
It is the first time that Quantum Racing have won a 52 Super Series regatta since they triumphed at Quantum Key West Regatta in January 2017, the curtain-raiser to last year’s six-event season. Their victory in Croatia was built on excellent starting and strong first beat strategies, very solid boat handling and is also testimony to their accelerated optimisation and learning process required because they only sailed their new boat three days before early May’s Sail Racing PalmaVela pre-season warm up where they finished second to Azzurra.
As the active racing unit of the American Magic America’s Cup team, the winning Quantum Racing crew line up for 2018 sees the return of Matt Cassidy (USA) in the mid bow role, Maciel Cichetti (ARG) join as trimmer, Cooper Dressler (USA) as grinder and Barker on the helm.
Advertisement
Terry Hutchinson, tactician of Quantum Racing, offered this on the American Magic Team; “We’ve spent the last 15 months getting the designers organised. I say we but really Adolfo Carrau has been telling me what we need to do and between him and Marcelino Botin they’ve assembled a really good group of people, a smart group of people, experienced, some old and some new. So time will tell. We’re 36 months out from the Cup so time will tell how it all goes.”
Victory in the last race for Harm Müller-Spreer’s Platoon was enough to return them to runners up overall at the expense of Takashi Okura’s Sled. With the chance to secure second, which would have been their best ever regatta finish since joining the circuit in Ibiza at the end of the 2014 season, Sled fouled Paprec in the final seconds of the start sequence and had to immediately take a penalty.
Sled’s tactician Ray Davies commented, “It’s a bit disappointing because the team’s been going really well, the boat’s going really well, and we had a chance for holding onto second there. But all in all we’re stoked with how it’s going. Finishing third we could have banked that at the beginning of the regatta we would have done so for sure, so we’re pretty happy. We’ve got plenty of things to work on and it feels like we are actually getting better every day, which is really really important. It’s very exciting, everyone’s really motivated, it’s a great group of people and Mr. Okura is really a fantastic helmsman so that makes it fun.”
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
