Court papers reveal Sir Ben Ainslie tried to broker a truce with INEOS over use of the AC75 for the next America's Cup in Naples. INEOS said no. The two camps are still miles apart; Jim Ratcliffe holds the whip hand, and the next deadline lands on 15 September.
The British challenge, fronted by Ben Ainslie under the Royal Yacht Squadron flag, turned up in style at Cowes Week for the America's Cup's 175th anniversary. But the legal war with Jim Ratcliffe's INEOS hasn't cooled off one degree, and there's still no end in sight. Hopes of racing Britannia again took a hit in the latest filings — a video surfaced a few weeks ago showing Ian Walker aboard her in the shed, clearly mid-refit.
If it stays that way, the AC75 fleet for the 38th Louis Vuitton America's Cup at Naples 2027 ends up five boats deep: Luna Rossa for Italy, Alinghi Red Bull Racing for Switzerland, the French challenge, American Racing Challenger and Team Australia – while everyone waits on a British court.
Athena Racing has now filed an amended defence, and it makes clear how far apart the two sides remain. Ainslie made a real peace offer — asking, at minimum, for provisional use of the AC75 at Naples — and an INEOS lawyer shot it down. A handshake ending looks a long way off.
Last week Athena Racing — Ainslie's outfit at the time of the 2024 Cup — won permission from the Admiralty Court of England and Wales to file that amended defence against the claim INEOS Racing brought on 15 April 2026. INEOS, Sir Jim Ratcliffe's company, disputes that the Royal Yacht Squadron Ltd owns the assets from the 2024 campaign; it says they belong to INEOS. Athena Racing Ltd was the squadron's team itself, a separate legal entity from the yacht club.
Athena lodged that amended defence three months ago, on 28 May. INEOS Racing took six weeks to respond, filing on 13 July. What's in dispute is whether the 2024 campaign — raced as Ineos Britannia — simply ended or whether Athena Racing carried it forward as a British team into the 38th Cup and who owns the gear either way. The AC75 Ineos Britannia is the obvious one – the boat that beat Luna Rossa in the Challenger Final before losing the match to the Kiwis.
The new documents include a letter Ainslie sent on 22 April to Jonny Ginns, INEOS Sport's director and group general counsel, asking INEOS to consider in good faith letting Athena hang onto those assets to compete in the 38th Cup. With the court case unlikely to be settled before Naples, could there be a truce that let the British team actually go sailing? By 28 May, Athena was clearly getting nervous — its filing noted the letter had gone unanswered.
Now we know why. A letter dated 5 June, from Ginns on behalf of the INEOS board, is cited in the filings as flatly rejecting Athena's request.
Nobody's made the proposal itself public. But the timing gives the game away: the challenger series starts in nine months, in May at Naples, and teams need to be on the water within six months at the outside. Had INEOS agreed, Athena — now racing as GB1 — could have used the AC75 and the rest of the 2024 kit without the legal cloud hanging over every training day.
Right now Britannia is being reworked somewhere undisclosed, with no word on when she'll go back in the water. GB1's base is taking shape at Bagnoli in the meantime, and the team is racing its two AC40s — GB1 and GB2 — through the preliminary series: Cagliari's done, Naples is next, 24–27 September. Don't expect the Admiralty Court to settle any of this before the Louis Vuitton Cup gets under way, either – legal observers reckon it'll drag on well past that.
Ownership of Britannia wasn't even a question until the final 38th America's Cup Protocol landed on 12 August 2025, banning new AC75 hulls outright. Three months earlier, the draft protocol had allowed exactly that — teams building fresh boats. Had that draft rule stuck, Athena could simply have built a new AC75 and gone racing, whatever happened with ownership.
INEOS did at least agree to let Athena's amended defence stand and now has until 15 September to answer it. Whatever the lawyers decide, the clock that matters most is the one in Naples — and right now, GB1 still doesn't have an AC75 to sail there.
This article was originally published on https://www.saily.it/ and has been rewritten and converted to English with permission of saily.
