Five things to look out for at Sassnitz SailGP

SailGP returns to the Baltic coast for the Germany Sail Grand Prix, heading back to the small German town of Sassnitz that produced one of the most extraordinary weekends in the league's history.

Crashes, structural failure and a Danish team that rewrote the record books. Their F50 clocked 103.93 kilometres per hour around the waters of Sassnitz, the first time any SailGP team had pushed the speedometer into triple figures.

It’s a venue that has more than left its mark on the calendar, and by most measures, is a quiet corner of Germany - until SailGP rolls into town.

Los Gallos have won the last two events on the SailGP calendar, taking victories in both Halifax and Portsmouth to put themselves firmly in the conversation for the top of the standings come the close of the season.

Now they arrive in Germany with the chance to do something only one team has managed in season six: win three events in a row.

Australia, who sit top of the standings on 66 points, did exactly that in the early part of the season, sweeping Rio, Bermuda and New York in a run of form that all but announced their intentions for the campaign.

Spain, who sit second on 54 points, will be acutely aware of that benchmark.

A third consecutive victory would not just be a remarkable achievement in its own right - it would also send a statement to Tom Slingsby's team that the title race is far from settled.

Standing in between the Spanish and their three-peat is a venue that is known to have made life difficult for teams last year.

A north-westerly wind funnelling over the hill to the north of the town produced gusts that were as unpredictable as they were powerful.

"Crashnitz was omnipresent within the team," Heil admitted this week, reflecting on twelve months ago. It is a nickname that has stuck - though nobody would wish for a repeat.

The forecast for this weekend suggests things may be a touch more forgiving. 

A more westerly breeze means less of the wind will be dragged across the hill to the north of the town before it reaches the fleet, softening some of the nastier gusts and shifts that made last year so testing.

The more westerly direction may well offer a land effect that could favour teams choosing the right-hand side of the course closer to the grandstand, making for some excellent viewing from the shoreline.

We are looking at somewhere between 15 and 20 knots. High winds, in other words, but not the kind of record-breaking stuff that Denmark capitalised on twelve months ago.

The racing should still be fast, spectacular and physically demanding. Just, hopefully, with a little less of the chaos that Sassnitz has previously served up.

Home events in SailGP carry a weight that neutral venues simply do not. For Erik Heil and the German team, this weekend in Sassnitz is about more than just points.

Twelve months ago they won the opening race of the event, a result that lifted the team and gave the home crowd something to cheer about. Speaking ahead of the event, Heil was clear about what he wants this venue to mean again.

"Last year, Sassnitz was a big turning point for our season and gave us a lot of strength," he said. 

"We felt way stronger on the race course; we started better for the remaining season, and we hope it is also the turning point this season for our starting average."

Four-time Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel - and co-owner of the team - will again be in Sassnitz, and Heil says his presence is always a benefit to the squad.

What makes the home ambition more complicated is the memory of Portsmouth. 

Germany endured a torrid weekend, coming within a whisker of a full capsize near Spitbank Fort - a moment Heil described in striking detail in our video available to our members on YouTube. 

They did win one race - race four in Group B - but aside from that single moment, Portsmouth was an event they will be glad to put behind them.

This weekend carries a degree of urgency that is hard to overstate. After the German event, the calendar points towards Valencia in early September and then Geneva.

Two events in the Middle East are also pencilled in - but it is widely expected those will not go ahead. If that proves to be the case, Geneva could become the Grand Final and Sassnitz is suddenly the third-to-last event of the regular season.

With positions hardening and the Grand Final approaching, every point is precious. Third through sixth in the standings is extraordinarily tight: Artemis sit third on 47 points, with USA a single point behind on 46. Emirates Great Britain are fifth on 44 and France sixth on 36. 

The jury is still out on whether the Grand Final will be three or four boats. If it is four, that fourth spot will become the most fought-over position in the fleet. Teams that have been quietly ticking along will need to start delivering this weekend.

The event held in Sassnitz last year has arguably already played more of a part in this year's results than any of this year's events so far.

The implications of what happened that weekend are still playing out. Take Brazil's mighty structural failure of their F50 platform.

The disintegration of the carbon structure led to SailGP implementing software to limit the use of foil rake - the exact limit that Black Foils flight controller Leo Takahashi hit and could not go past when trying to rectify the events that led to the devastating crash of the French in Auckland earlier this year.

With the Black Foils missing out on half of this season's events so far, it has more than impacted the make-up of the season standings.

Equally, USA's port-starboard collision with the British in race four set a precedent for how teams at fault are expected to repair and ensure a victim's F50 is race-ready as soon as practically possible.

Even if it means no racing for the offender, as we saw with the US team on the Sunday of last year's Sassnitz event.

The fleet would do well to keep all of that in mind this weekend. The racing is fierce enough without the long shadow of damaged boats and absent teams following the fleet into next season.

A home crowd eager for German glory, a title race that refuses to be settled, and a clutch of teams scrambling for every last point before the three, or possibly four, boat Grand Final. Sassnitz is sure to throw up some interest.

Whatever unfolds this weekend, all the ingredients are in place for another memorable chapter on the Baltic coast.