Why a Formula One insider is betting on the America’s Cup

By Shona Gibson

It’s Saturday morning in Naples, and the latest team to join the Cup fleet on the water is still savouring its first day of racing. Over a cup of coffee overlooking the marina, I sat down with Chris Welch, whose ARC Team USA won the very first race it entered less than 24 hours earlier.

Welch, the British co-founder and vice-chairman of ARC Team USA, has spent two decades brokering Formula One sponsorship deals with the likes of McLaren, Ferrari and Williams. When I refer to him as formerly of that world, he corrects me straight away: “Well firstly, I’m still in Formula One.”

Not in any formal role, he explains, but through the teams and companies he still works with across the sport, from helping circuits land title sponsors to bringing brands into F1. So why add sailing to the mix?

In October 2025, American Magic pulled out of the 38th America’s Cup, leaving Naples on course to be the first Cup without an American team. Welch and Czech billionaire Karel Komárek had been weighing up sports to invest in, from cycling, football and the NBA to F1 and even SailGP. Ultimately it was the Cup’s shake-up that tipped the balance: an open door for a US challenger, just as new rules promised a Cup every two years.

“The America’s Cup has the greatest legacy in sport,” he tells The Foil. “It’s probably the purest example of technological advancements and innovation in human performance. The only thing that comes close to that is Formula One.

“It’s grown geographically, particularly in the US. Liberty [Media] have done an amazing job promoting the sport, bringing it to a much wider audience, and the America’s Cup has the opportunity to do that as well.”

ARC was confirmed as a challenger on 8 April, buying American Magic’s AC75 Patriot and two AC40s, with Ken Read installed as CEO and double Olympic champion Giles Scott as sailing director by the end of the month.

“Four months ago, we didn’t have a bank account. Five months ago, we didn’t have a yacht club,” says Welch. “We’ve employed 70-odd people over the last five or six months… We’ve developed a brand, we’ve created a team with a culture.”

And not every hire has come from the obvious places. “We’ve got a fighter pilot on our design team, for example, because we don’t just want sailors. Teams have done that forever, but we want to bring people with different experiences and knowledge to help the boat go faster and the team get better.”

F1 has been here before. Former McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh ran Land Rover BAR’s 2017 campaign with Adrian Newey on design, while Mercedes and Red Bull brought their engineering arms to INEOS Britannia and Alinghi for Barcelona 2024. So should sailing be taking lessons from F1?

“A lot of people have come from Formula One into sailing historically thinking they’re better,” he says. “That’s not proven to be the case.”

Hence leaving the sailing calls to Read, a two-time Rolex Yachtsman of the Year. He helmed Dennis Conner’s Stars & Stripes at the 2000 and 2003 America’s Cups, skippered Puma to second and third in two Volvo Ocean Races, and won Sydney Hobart line honours aboard the 100ft supermaxi Comanche.

“I’m not pretending I’m a sailing expert; I’ve just about worked out what the mainsail and the jib are! I’m not coming into this and trying to impact the way that we race on the water… or Kenny’s decisions as to who our sailors are. That is his lane, that is his decision, and he’s the best at it.”

On the opening day of the Preliminary Regatta in Naples, with Harry Melges, on a foot he’d broken the week before and Lucas Calabrese co-helming, Michael Menninger and Hans Henken trimming, the Americans opened up a lead of around 250 metres on Luna Rossa to win their first ever America's Cup race.

“I can’t hide the smile,” Welch admits.

“Winning yesterday, we’re very aware that we haven’t cracked the America’s Cup. We’re not running around thinking that we’re going to be winning the Cup in ’27, but absolutely, we’re not here to make up the numbers… We’ve built a plan around competing in the next three Cups. We’ve signed our sailors for the next two.”

The regatta wasn’t all smooth sailing, a slip at a leeward gate dropped them to seventh in the very next race, but by Sunday they finished fourth of nine AC40s in the weekend’s racing.

American Racing Challenger Team USA: the name couldn’t be more American, even if its founders are a Czech and a Brit. But by having Sail Newport as the club they are representing, a club that was set up when the Cup left Newport in 1983 to keep sailing accessible, they are doing just that.

With Naples six hours ahead of Rhode Island, the weather delay to Friday’s start turned out to be a help for their early morning watch party. “We’ve got a big group of people supporting us from Rhode Island, from across the state! There were a lot of very happy people down at the club”

Reaching beyond Newport is the next step. A new partnership with US Sailing will take the campaign into clubhouses, including virtual “Inside ARC” sessions where members can hear from the team’s sailors, coaches and designers.

“Our hope is, with our relationship with US Sailing, that we can go to the 1,500 to 2,000 yacht clubs across the US and really bring everyone on the journey,” says Welch.

“We don’t want to be an elitist team. We want to be a team for the masses. We’re a team for all of America.”

The pathways being built are part of the pitch too. “One of the reasons we came into the Cup is partly because of the youth and women’s angle,” he adds. “Obviously, the senior squad in the AC75 and the America’s Cup trophy is absolutely what we’re here for. But the more people we can get into the ecosystem, the more people we can get competitively sailing, the more people see a pathway from university and amateur or youth worlds to the professional side.”

The new rules give that pathway real weight, with every AC75 now required to carry at least one woman. ARC’s founding squad already includes Louisa Nordstrom, who has come up through collegiate, Olympic and professional sailing. With the Cup now on a two-year cycle, it’s a pipeline the team can feed across the three campaigns it has planned – or, as Read put it when the US Sailing deal was announced, a chance for fans to “feel like ARC Team USA is their team”.

So how hands-on is the F1 matchmaker? By the time we met, Welch had been to the waterside team launch, had breakfast with rival team owners and taken the AC40’s driver’s seat, until a hydraulic problem intervened. With the AC75 due to launch in November and racing in Naples running from next spring to the Match in July, he plans to spend two months there.

“We’ll go as far as we can and we’ll fight as hard as anyone,” he says. “We’ll work really, really hard, we’ll keep on putting the time in and we’ll aim to improve every day. As long as we’re doing that, we’ll be happy.”