RB3 | Design, development & fitout squad in Brackley & Turweston

The America’s Cup has often been compared to F1 – both are the pinnacle events in highly complex sports, where engineering and technology must be married seamlessly to athletic excellence. There are differences too, the power source for an F1 car doesn’t blow hot and cold, hard and soft, in puffs and lulls, shifts and gusts. The car is also a lot smaller than the boat. 

This was the fundamental problem that the operations team had to address when they planned the development of RB3, the team’s America’s Cup race boat. The design team were incorporated into the Brackley campus of the Mercedes GP team, where there was sufficient office capacity for enough desks, seats and meeting rooms. However, the 75-foot long AC75 was never going to fit into an F1 garage during the period that the complex hydraulic and electrical systems were built into the yacht. 

“The primary problem was finding somewhere with the space for the AC75, and all the support activities that would be going on around it,” explained Dave Endean, COO. “The major task was always going to be the fit-out of RB3, but there was a lot more; everything from goods inwards and preparing equipment for shipping, to component manufacture, servicing, testing and repair -- and the test rigs alone are some big gear.  

“We also needed this place to be close enough to the Brackley campus, so that we didn’t create friction in communications between the designers and engineers in Brackley, and the new site for the build and operations team. It turned out that an aircraft hanger on Turweston Aerodrome just outside Brackley was perfect.” 

The team took over the building in 2022, and since then it’s undergone an extensive renovation. “We wanted to create a parallel to the F1 environment for the INEOS Britannia America’s Cup team,” said Geoff Willis, Technical Director. “The facility at the match venue in Barcelona is the front line of the operation, much like the engineering offices and garage at a Grand Prix. We needed the equivalent of the F1 factory back in the UK; with design, testing and manufacturing operations that can drive the constant evolution that we know will be necessary for success.”

Martin Fischer, Chief Designer at INEOS Britannia, summarised the special relationship with the Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team "The collaboration with the Mercedes F1 Team on the development of our race boat has been a great opportunity for the team. I’m a strong believer that looking at a problem from different perspectives may lead to new and potentially better solutions. Ideas or methods that are daily business in one research field might be unknown in another field, even though the underlying physics are quite similar. This is what we experienced during the development of our race boat. Working on our race yacht in Brackley together with the Mercedes F1 team – 150 kilometres inland – sparked extremely fruitful discussions between race yacht and race car designers and led to a yacht that has surprised observers with her look and will hopefully also positively surprise on the race course."

 Outwardly unpretentious and surrounded by light aircraft, the Turweston building now houses one of the most advanced marine facilities on the planet. “I think that as a team we can be just as proud of the operation and partnership that we’ve built with Mercedes as we can of the boat. They are both integral and essential to achieving our goals this summer,” concluded Dave Endean.