Modified Round Robin America’s Cup Qualifiers Schedule

Does Land Rover BAR have the easiest schedule?

On 18 October 2016 ACEA published a modified schedule for the double round robin America’s Cup Qualifiers. Instead of 10 days of racing with each team racing once per day, the AC Qualifiers have been reduced to eight days with at least one team having to race twice on every day. This is a big deal.

Here is the original schedule:

Original America's Cup 2017 Race Calendar — Original America’s Cup 2017 Race Calendar

Here is the new calendar. You can download it here.

America's Cup 2017 Race Calendar — America’s Cup 2017 Race Calendar

The big advantage of the new schedule is having a guaranteed layday between the Challenger Playoff semi-finals and finals.

Stamina and Limited Substitutions

Much has been made of the physical demands on the grinders. Only two crew substitutions can be made between races, so when a fresh team comes up against a team that has already raced once, the fresh team will have a big advantage.

And, what if something breaks during your first race? Even if you have time to make the repair, your preparation for the second race will be thrown off.

A Closer Look at the Schedule

Does Land Rover BAR have the easiest schedule?
Do Oracle Team USA and SoftBank Team Japan have schedules almost as good?
Do the Kiwis have a good schedule?
Do Artemis Racing and Groupama Team France have the worst schedules?

All of the teams have a day off on Thursday 1 June, after six days of racing. Five of the six teams get another layday, all except Emirates Team New Zealand. In return, the Kiwis only have two days when they race twice. Each of the other teams has two races on three days. Let’s look at the schedules, team by team.

Land Rover BAR seems to have the best schedule: they have to race twice on three days, but each time they will be racing against another team who has already raced earlier in the day. BAR also has two laydays in a row – Thursday 1 June, when all the teams are off and Friday 2 June. This will let them regain some strength for the last day of the round robin when they face Team Japan, and, in the very last race of the round robin, Oracle.

Oracle Team USA has it almost as good: each time they race twice in a day they too race against another team that has already raced earlier in the day. But… they have to race twice on two successive days, Day 2 against Land Rover BAR and Day 3 against SoftBank Team Japan.

SoftBank Team Japan only has to race a fresh team once. On Day 6 their second race is against Oracle Team USA, but Team Japan has a layday on Day 5 so they should be rested for Day 6.

Artemis Racing faces fresh teams on two of their three two-race days. Interestingly they will face BAR twice when BAR is fresh but Artemis has already raced earlier in the day. Like BAR, they get two days in a row off – May 31st and June 1st – before the last two days of the round robin.

Groupama Team France may have the toughest schedule. They race twice on three days, twice against teams that are fresh. The one time their second race of the day is against another team that has raced it’s against BAR.

Emirates Team New Zealand is the only team that races twice on only two days – both times against fresh teams: BAR on Day 3 and Team France on Day 7, the day after the layday for all teams. This seems like it should be a good schedule, but they are the only team that does not get a day off on one of the race days.