Alinghi Red Bull Racing
Designing Success with Alinghi Red Bull Racing
October 6, 2022
Red Bull Advanced Technologies apply high-performance vehicle engineering derived from competing in Formula 1, to racing the fastest boats in the America’s Cup.
Principal Designer of the Swiss Challenger Marcelino Botin tells us what it’s like to lead the team that has won the America’s Cup twice, with the help of Red Bull Advanced Technology, the high-tech performance division of Red Bull Technology:
Alinghi Red Bull Racing is,
before anything else, a team. A group of passionate people working together
towards one goal: winning the America’s Cup.
You met the sailing team a few weeks ago in The Faces of Alinghi Red Bull Racing, now it’s time to introduce the design team. My name is Marcelino Botin, and I’m honoured to be the principal designer of the Swiss challenger.
It’s a big responsibility to lead such a legendary design team that has won the America’s Cup twice, and even more so after partnering with Red Bull and benefiting from the knowledge of Red Bull Advanced Technologies. I work on hydro and aerodynamics on a daily basis, but my broader role is to keep an eye on the whole project, from a design point of view. This job has evolved a lot over time. Previously, we were designing boats; now these boats are closer to planes. I have been part of the industry for a long time and have followed this transition closely, adding the aerodynamics to the design.
But that is not the only thing
that has changed in the boat design. When I started, there were three or four
times more sailors than designers, now the balance has shifted. The design team
has become bigger. The most important thing of all is to hire people that can
work in a group, not as individuals. These people are the key to success, as
well as failure. This is even more important when working under pressure, as
timing is key. And there is never enough. Our competitors are one campaign
ahead of us. We don’t have the AC75 experience they have, but our team’s
strength lies in the talent that we have hired and the strong and positive
atmosphere that we work in.
It’s so interesting, every day we
work on something different. We challenge the process, we’re challenged, we
push the limits. A topic that Red Bull Advanced Technologies knows well. Their
high-performance vehicle engineering group supports us with its engineering and
design expertise derived from competing in Formula 1, the world’s fastest
development cycle. Many aspects can be exported from Formula 1 to the America’s
Cup. At the beginning of the campaign, alongside RBAT, we identified areas that
they could help us with, and since then, have been improving the collaboration across
many projects that are evolving successfully. We collaborate with them on a
regular basis, some employees are full time with us and others join us
occasionally. Ultimately they are all part of our project and it’s exciting to
listen to them, to learn from them and to work with them. Many elements come
together in the design of such a boat.
One of these elements is the sailors’ input. We encourage their
participation in our meetings, and we try to join them as often as possible. On
the simulator, on the boat, and on the chase boats that are usually packed with
designers. Now that they’ve started sailing BoatZero, their feedback is
extremely important for the design of our race boat. At the end of the day, the
sailors need to be happy with the product we are creating!
Design coordinator Adolfo Carrau oversees the different areas of design that are led by the following team members: Steven Robert, structural engineer lead, Gautier Sergent, sail designer, Joseph Ozanne, simulator lead, Nicolas Bailey, foil designer, and Gonzalo Redondo, foil and hull designer. From a global perspective the most important strength of any design group is how the whole team works together. When I walk into the office and overhear the designers sharing ideas with colleagues from all the other departments, I know we are working in the right direction. Each of them has a key role in our success. The America’s Cup seems far away, but we are now at an essential moment of our campaign, gathering as much data as possible from the boat, the simulator and all our design tools. Developing a design concept around this information that is competitive in the conditions that we will race in is crucial for the success of the campaign.
The countdown is on!
Red Bull Advanced Technologies Takes To The Seas With Alinghi Red Bull Racing
January 31, 2022
Red Bull Advanced Technologies, the high-performance vehicle engineering division of Red Bull Racing, will support the newly formed Alinghi Red Bull Racing America’s Cup team with its engineering and design expertise derived from competing in Formula 1, the world’s fastest development cycle.
Red Bull announced a new partnership with double America’s Cup winners Alinghi in December last year to form Alinghi Red Bull Racing and challenge for sailing’s biggest prize by taking Formula 1 know-how and expertise from the circuit to the sea.
Located at the Red Bull Technology
Campus in Milton Keynes, UK, engineers and designers at Red Bull Advanced
Technologies will work together with Switzerland-based Alinghi Red Bull Racing
on specific areas where it’s believed F1 technology can add performance to the
AC75 Racing Yacht. In particular aerodynamics, simulation, composites and
systems design appear to have many parallels between the two sports and thus
offer opportunities to extract every ounce of performance possible from the
yacht.
Rob Gray, Technical Director, Red
Bull Advanced Technologies, commented: “We are delighted to work
together with Alinghi and their talented group of engineers to help develop the
AC75 Racing Yacht by taking inspiration from the same tools, techniques and
methods used in Formula 1 and applying these to the biggest competition in
international sailing. This new adventure will see the two worlds of
high-performance marine and Formula 1 engineering come together and with
Alinghi, we’re hugely excited to see what we can collectively achieve as a
result.”
Silvio Arrivabene, Co-General Manager
of Design and Construction, Alinghi Red Bull Racing, added: “Traditionally
a design competition arguably even more than a sporting one, the America’s Cup
has in recent times looked at the F1 teams as the expression of the level to
aspire to. To now have the opportunity to strengthen our design process with
specialties brought in from the F1 winning experience is a treat and a
privilege. The team values and spirit we naturally share with the Red Bull
family have created an exciting working environment that we look forward to
exploiting together with Red Bull Advanced Technologies.”
In conjunction with the America’s Cup, Alinghi Red Bull Racing will also field teams in the debut of the Women’s America’s Cup Regatta, as well as in the return of the Youth America’s Cup. Follow the link to visit their website:
Alinghi Red Bull Racing