In the modern America’s Cup, AC75 speed gains are rarely the product of a single eureka moment. They are forged through thousands of decisions, relentless refinement, and close collaboration among every member of the team — from the people designing and engineering the boat to those building and sailing it on the water.
With the Class Rules and Technical Regulations defining many of the AC75’s major parameters, the challenge for the Louis Vuitton 38th America’s Cup is not to reinvent the boat but to uncover the many small opportunities that make it better. The foils, rudder, sails, and control systems remain key areas for development, and the margins can be remarkably slim — yet absolutely crucial for a successful campaign.
“I don’t think there is any idea that’s too small,” says Dave Olsen, Structural Engineer at Emirates Team New Zealand. “We collect all of those ideas and sit down as a group and work out which ones we think actually have some potential.”
That mindset underpins the entire design process. Ideas flow from every corner of the team, whether from designers and engineers exploring technical possibilities, sailors pushing the boat on the water, or shore crew working in the shed. The challenge lies in identifying which concepts have the potential to deliver a meaningful difference.
For foil and sail shapes, much of this work is driven by mathematical optimisation and computer simulation. The team explores enormous numbers of possible configurations, with computing power allowing potential designs to be iterated around the clock. What ultimately makes it onto the boat is only a fraction of that effort — the result of countless calculations, comparisons, and decisions made long before a component ever reaches the water. “What you see in our race boat is the one per cent, or the point one per cent,” says Dan Bernasconi, Head of Design.
Identifying the right solution is not always straightforward. With the many variables and parameters present in high-performance sailing, it is increasingly difficult to evaluate which changes have what influence. Simulations provide an important reference in this complex decision-making process.
“The main word that we use a lot is ‘trade-offs’,” says Bobby Kleinschmit, Principal Naval Architect, highlighting the importance of experience and explaining why the relationship between the design team and sailors is particularly vital. The designers and engineers develop ideas and make predictions; the sailors test them in real conditions and return with feedback that helps the team refine its understanding.
“We try to keep a really tight feedback loop with the sailors, because that’s the most efficient way to make progress,” says Dave Olsen. In many ways, the process mirrors other high-performance sports such as Formula 1, where specialised teams work across design, engineering, simulation, and testing to find marginal gains, balancing performance, technical constraints, and feedback from drivers — or, in this case, the sailors.
Ultimately, finding speed is a collective effort. It requires the curiosity to explore new ideas, the discipline to narrow them down, the tools to test them, and the experience to understand what the results mean in practice.
Performance emerges from the accumulation of all the small improvements.
