Spanish team crash out of Perth

The Spanish team is out of the first grand prix of the 2026 SailGP season before competition has even got going. Los Gallos suffered major structural damage to their F50 catamaran, for reasons yet to be determined.

Driver Diego Botin told SailGP media: “Unfortunately we had damage around both board cases during a gybe in the second practice race. In the middle of the gybe, during the turn, the board case snapped and we had quite a big crash.”

Botin reported damage to the foiling board, the board case where the foil slots into the hull, and to the hull itself. It’s a big chunk of work to get fixed, and too much for SailGP’s tech team to manage before racing commences on Saturday.

The short, sharp waves in Bather’s Bay in Fremantle might have something to do with the damage to the Spanish boat. Foiling boats are notoriously hard to manage in bigger wave states, which makes this weekend’s grand prix potentially one of the toughest in SailGP’s six-year history.

So now the fleet reduces from 13 to 12 boats for when racing gets underway on Saturday. The forecast is for 13 to 17 knots, a little lighter than what the teams have been experiencing these past three days.

The prediction of slightly lighter winds will come as a relief to pretty much everybody, especially after what happened to Spain today.