After months of training away from the competition, France's La Roche-Posay Racing Team is about to find out exactly where it stands in the field.
Skippered by Quentin Delapierre, the squad heads to the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup Preliminary Regatta Sardinia, racing from Thursday 21 May on the Gulf of Angels off Cagliari. Eight AC40s will contest the event across a tightly packed schedule: a single official training day followed by three days of racing, up to eight fleet races, and a match-race final between the two top-placed crews.
No Naples 2027 points are at stake in Cagliari, yet for a team that has built its programme almost entirely without rivals nearby, the regatta carries a significance no ranking can capture. It is the first genuine test under competitive pressure.
"This is our first real milestone with our new crew," Delapierre said. "In Lorient things came together really well, and the six of us feel comfortable together. We completed some very strong training blocks, but alone in Lorient we were a bit like kings of the track. Here, it's a reality check."
The team logged 19 sailing days in Lorient, spending at least three hours on the water in each session. Those days were used to build boat feel, sharpen timing, and develop the communication that fleet racing will now put under immediate pressure.
"The conditions in Lorient were exceptional," Delapierre said. "We had a lot of high-quality hours on the water and were able to cover the full range of techniques we wanted to test. Training alone also has advantages: it allows you to learn how to feel your boat, recognise the sensations that generate speed, and focus the whole team on a single objective."
Sporting director Philippe Presti was candid about the trade-off inherent in that approach. "We focused on ourselves, our manoeuvres, our strategy, and our performance. The first few days will allow us to draw conclusions, adapt, and keep improving. That's the most important thing."
In Cagliari, Delapierre and Diego Botín will share the helm, with Jason Saunders and Florian Trittel working as trimmers. The reserve athletes are helmsman Enzo Balanger and trimmer Timothé Lapauw. Delapierre and Saunders carry over from the 2024 campaign, while Botín and Trittel, both Olympic champions, are entering the AC40 environment for the first time under this programme.
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With relatively limited time aboard together, the crew has focused on cementing role clarity and getting the four-person decision loop functioning reliably when pressure mounts. Delapierre understands precisely how tightly those roles depend on one another.
"The start is really built by two and by four. If Diego doesn't give me the tack exactly in the right place, things become very complicated. And if the tack is good but I don't correctly apply our strategy in the final phase, it's just as complicated. We spend a lot of time working on our timing and discussing these sequences."
The Gulf of Angels course is expected to follow a broadly conventional layout, but fitting eight AC40s onto a single start line transforms the picture considerably. A compressed start box means tighter quarters, more crossings, and sustained pressure on every crew from the opening sequence onwards. The weekend forecast points to sunshine and a southerly airflow, with a sea state likely to make manoeuvres and transitions considerably more demanding.
"With eight boats there will be less room," Presti said. "The starting phase is fairly close to a match-race box. Over the weekend there will probably be some sea state, and we're happy to have sailed in those conditions in Lorient."
Presti was direct about the broader purpose of entering this regatta. "The America's Cup is made up of big machines. You have to learn how to put yourself under fire, see how the organisation reacts, and improve from those situations. This regatta is one of the rare opportunities to put everyone into real confrontation."
For Delapierre, Cagliari also represents a marker of how far the programme has come. "Compared to the start of the previous campaign, the team has really taken a major step forward. We worked extremely well in Lorient, dissecting manoeuvres, the feel of the boat, and making sure we are all on the same page. On the eve of Cagliari, I am reasonably confident. We have very good feelings onboard, and above all we are excited to race against eight boats."
Racing begins on 21 May.
