Saturday's collision unfolded without warning. The Black Foils' F50 appeared to lose rudder contact with the water, sending the boat veering sharply to starboard. The stadium-style harbour course left the French crew with nowhere to go. Their F50 rode up and over the starboard hull of the Black Foils' F50 in a heavy, unavoidable impact.
It was a sharp reminder of how finely balanced these 50-foot foiling catamarans are at speeds beyond 80 km/h. Tight course boundaries, enormous structural loads, and no margin for error.
That incident now shapes how Sunday's racing will be run.
SailGP has confirmed a split-fleet format for day two, driven by two converging factors: the confined nature of the Waitematā Harbour course and a stronger wind forecast expected to build throughout the race window. Rather than sending a full fleet into a tight space under increasing breeze, the organisation has divided the 13 teams into two groups based on the current leaderboard standings.
| Pos | Team | Driver | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DS Team France (France) | Quentin Delapierre | 17 pts |
| 2 | BONDS Flying Roos (Australia) | Tom Slingsby | 17 pts |
| 3 | Los Gallos (Spain) | Diego Botin | 12 pts |
| 4 | Black Foils (New Zealand) | Peter Burling | 10 pts |
| 5 | Emirates GBR (GBR) | Dylan Fletcher | 9 pts |
| 6 | ROCKWOOL Racing (Denmark) | Nicolai Sehested | 9 pts |
| 7 | Artemis (Sweden) | Nathan Outteridge | 8 pts |
| 8 | Germany by Deutsche Bank (Germany) | Erik Heil | 6 pts |
| 9 | Mubadala Brazil (Brazil) | Martine Grael | 4 pts |
| 10 | Switzerland | Sébastien Schneiter | 3 pts |
| 11 | U.S. SailGP Team (USA) | Taylor Canfield | 3 pts |
| 12 | NorthStar (Canda) | Giles Scott | 1 pts |
| 13 | Red Bull Italy (Italy) | Phil Robertson | -1 pts |
Penalties and notes
- Black Foils handed 8 penalty points for collision with DS Team France during Fleet Race 2 - Red Bull Italy handed 4 point penalty for colliding with a racecourse mark during Fleet Race 1
Allocation alternates (in this fashion: Group A, Group B, Group B, Group A, Group A, etc) down the order.
Group A: France, New Zealand, Great Britain, Germany, Brazil, Canada, Italy Group B: Australia, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, United States
Only eleven F50s will actually race. Both France and New Zealand remain part of the official event classification and have been included in the split fleet configuration because both teams started the regatta, but neither will compete on Sunday. In practical terms, Group A will field five competing crews while Group B fields six.
Each group sails two fleet races, producing four fleet races in total before the Auckland final. Points within each group are awarded on a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0 scale and added directly to each team's cumulative totals carried over from Saturday, producing a single unified leaderboard across the full weekend.
Once the four races are complete, the top three teams on the overall standings advance to the winner-takes-all final. Those three spots are drawn from both groups combined, regardless of which group a team came from. As with every SailGP event, the final decides the winner. Should teams finish level on points, standard SailGP tiebreaker rules apply, with the most recent race result consulted first.
The Waitematā Harbour makes for spectacular racing, but it is genuinely tight. When a full fleet converges on a bottom mark at speed, compressions can turn chaotic quickly. Splitting the fleet reduces the number of boats arriving at those critical turning points simultaneously, opening cleaner rounding lanes and giving each crew more room to make tactical decisions. After Saturday's impact, that breathing room carries real weight.
The wind forecast adds further reason for the change. Sustained winds in the mid-teens in knots, with gusts climbing considerably higher through the race window, create conditions where managing boat-on-boat risk becomes every bit as important as raw speed around the course.
None of that makes Sunday's racing any less fierce. Four fleet races leave plenty of room for the leaderboard to shift, and with fewer boats on the water the head-to-head battles become sharper and more direct. The path to the final is straightforward: produce two strong results within your group, reach the top three overall, then win the final.
SailGP's response to a bruising opening day reads as measured rather than reactive. The crews that sail on Sunday will push just as hard as they always do. On this harbour, after what unfolded 24 hours ago, precision and judgement may prove to be the deciding qualities.
