The Emirates Dubai Sail Grand Prix presented by P&O Marinas kicks off on November 23. Ahead of the 2025 Season opener, Rolex SailGP CEO Russell Coutts reveals his behind-the-scenes insight of the fleet.
We’re about to begin our record-breaking 2025 Season here in Dubai, but in the off-season we’ve seen incredible growth for the league, with new team sales, new host venue announcements, an expanded global calendar of events and new partnerships, including a title partnership with Rolex that marks a new era for our Championship.
When we launched SailGP in 2019, we set out with a vision to revolutionize the sport of sailing to broaden the appeal beyond sailing fans to general sports and especially racing fans. We’ve just announced a new raft of sponsors and our family of global league partners now includes Rolex, Emirates, DP World, Mubadala, Oracle and Apex. We’re proud of that portfolio and we’ll continue to add to it in the coming weeks and months ahead.
As a league, we’re experiencing unprecedented demand for new teams heading into the 2025 Season, with 10 of the 12 teams this season now privately owned. All future teams joining the league will also be privately owned and financed too. The French team will miss the first event in Dubai and join us in Auckland in January 2025 for the rest of the season. Their boat is currently being finished in Auckland, New Zealand and we’re looking forward to having them back on the start line next year.
There are lots of new developments this season, including the incoming high speed T-Foils, which will be rolled out fleet-wide in Auckland. These high speed T-foils make the boats about 10% faster compared to our current L-Foils and should make the boat easier to control. During testing in San Francisco, we saw recorded speeds of 101.98 km/h in 33 km/h of wind.
That means that in the right conditions, if we have 40-45 km/h of wind, our F50s may well get to the predicted speeds of around 110 km/h. We also have light air T-Foils in development, which are aimed at getting the boats foiling earlier in lower wind speeds. but these are likely to enter the fleet later this season - we’ll probably see them for the first time in Geneva. There’s also new high speed rudders in construction although unfortunately they won’t be ready for San Francisco, so we’ll probably see them in Rio or New York. The best feature of those will be the added control at high speeds.
We have a new points scoring system this season too, with points only awarded to teams which finish 1st-10th. That means teams which finish 11th and 12th won’t receive any points - and that goes for qualifying fleet racing and the overall Championship results.
We’re also doubling our event prize money, which brings the total season prize money to $12.8m USD, giving our athletes more incentive than ever before to perform when racing gets underway. Of course, as professional sailors, all athletes are paid to compete, so the prize money is a bonus for those teams making it onto the podium at any of our events.
The 2025 Season is set to be our most expansive yet, unfolding over a 12 month period across five continents. We have a raft of new venues; Rio/Brazil, Sassnitz/Germany, Geneva/Switzerland, Portsmouth/UK and Auckland/New Zealand. We’ve also got two new teams on the start line - Mubadala Brazil and Red Bull Italy. These new teams will help grow our audience in Brazil and Italy where we also have new broadcast agreements with Globo TV and Sky Italy. The Mubadala Brazil SailGP Team also has the league’s first ever female driver - double Olympic champion Martine Grael.
Judging from what I’ve heard from practice, Mubadala Brazil have been doing pretty well against the teams they’ve been practicing against, so I’m excited to see how they perform in racing this weekend. Red Bull Italy meanwhile is being run by Rolex SailGP legend Jimmy Spithill and will be driven by two-time Olympic champion Ruggero Tita - that’s exciting news.
There’s been an active transfer market between seasons, with some of the most notable moves including Kyle Langford from Australia to Red Bull Italy, Andy Maloney from New Zealand to Mubadala Brazil and Giles Scott from Emirates GBR to Canada. Andy Maloney was one of the best acquisitions of the off-season and he’s one of the reasons I think Brazil is going so well in practice. Judging from the training reports, their flight has been consistently higher and more stable than the other teams (Red Bull Italy and USA).
The movement of Kyle Langford and Andy Maloney means that Australia and New Zealand - two of the most established crew set ups in the league - have been disrupted heading into the new season. I think it’s definitely going to take some time to adapt to those changes. Leo Takahashi has replaced Andy Maloney as New Zealand flight controller - he raced with Japan in Season 2 and helped the United States with a bit of flight control last season but he hasn’t had the same level of competition as Andy Maloney.
Chris Draper has replaced Langford as Australia wing trimmer and I think he should be a pretty good substitute. He’s looking really fit (apparently he’s been doing a lot of biking) but he’s also a lot lighter than Langford. He’s raced in that position with the British, Japanese and Canadian crews in the past. But Kyle has sailed with Tom for years and that’s got a value - just knowing each others’ strengths, weaknesses and their way of communicating is massive. It will be interesting to see what kind of a difference (if any) it makes when racing gets underway.
With new teams, new venues and new equipment, it’s set to be a fascinating season. The 11 F50s will hit the water for racing on November 23 and the 2025 Season opener will begin.
Racing takes place between 2pm - 3.30pm GST on November 23/24. Full broadcast information and How to Watch details are HERE.
