Engineered4Extremes - In Focus

Britain’s next America’s Cup challenger is based in landlocked Northamptonshire, about as far from the open sea as an English team can be. Athena Racing, the British challenge for the 2027 America’s Cup, is headquartered at Brackley, sharing a site with the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 team. The location is deliberate: since 2021, Athena has partnered directly with Mercedes-AMG F1 Applied Science, bringing Formula 1 aerodynamics and data engineering into the design of a boat that foils above the water at speeds conventional yachts cannot approach. Sailing and motorsport rarely share an address, let alone an engineering department. Athena’s wager is that a hull designed with F1’s obsessive approach to airflow, structured data and marginal gains can out-sail boats built by traditional marine specialists alone