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Nicolás Bailey, an aeronautical engineer from Madrid on the court of Alinghi Red Bull Racing

30/10/2022

Updated at 11:38 a.m.

The Madrid aeronautical engineer Nicolas Bailey, a key player in the Swiss ‘Alinghi Red Bull Racing’ design team, challenging in the 37th Copa América 2024 in Barcelona, ​​considers that, “Marcelino Botín is the Head of Design, but he is just another technician in the office and all decisions are made as a group; no one is above anyone else.”

Add that, “The technical quality of the group is amazing because new things come out every day, innovations and those who have formed it have created a true team. It is what I said before about the very horizontal structure where there is a person in charge, but that person in charge shares everything With everyone” .

Regarding his presence in Barcelona, ​​he acknowledges that, “I am here as if by chance, by chance. I came from working with Airbus, and I started the 34th edition of the Cup in San Francisco in 2013, although it was not very official and it was already as a partner of the American team ‘Oracle ‘ at the 35th edition in Bermuda 2017 and then went on with American Magic at the 36th in Auckland in 2021.”

“I was in the future design department at Airbus and we had tools to quickly make changes with things bigger or smaller to see if the design was going in the right or wrong direction” concrete.

“It was then” keep going, “and I didn’t know them at all, when I made friends with Marcelino Botín, from Santander, then chief designer of the ‘American Magic’ and with Adolfo Carrau, his second, and with almost everyone who is now at ‘Alinghi’. Besides, I work in Getafe and Santander are very close and when I was working with ‘Oracle’ I had to go to the other part of the world and now, in two hours I’m in the office”.

Aeronautical Engineer from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, graduated with honors, considers that the monohulls with AC75 ‘Foils’ that are used for the America’s Cup, “I do not agree with what they say that they are like an inverted plane. For me they are very similar to a normal plane since they are supported from above because they have their ‘wings’, which are the ‘foils'”.

He never thought that because of his profession he would be a key player in the most important sailing competition in the world because, “I had no knowledge of sailing and we got into this because the boss of our department who loves the world of sailing and everything that the America’s Cup and pushed a lot, but had no knowledge of sailing or nautical”.

“What is certain is that there are many similarities at the level of designs, concepts, surfaces, moving parts and appendages. My task is to design the best ‘foils’ (wings) to win the Cup, but the team, in general, is very horizontal; that is to say that each one has their assigned task and then they move to the structures department where they make those designs a reality”.

For Barcelona there will be changes in the AC75 compared to 2021 since, “There are some design rules, a bit of an interpretation of the last edition of the Cup because when there was little wind the AC75s had a hard time taking off and there were some problems. This allows for slightly longer, slimmer and above all more efficient appendages and they will be able to generate more lift at low speeds and be able to take off earlier” .

“There is a simulator team that is run by Joseph Ozanne that he works with a lot and then we have tools at all levels to assess if the boat can take off at low speeds and then you get to the whole department that is more complex, the CFD department. (Fluid Dynamics Computation) to which you send a geometry and conditions in the fluid and they send you the forces that are pulling the boat backwards, the resistance and the forces that are going to lift the boat” .

All these operations are carried out by other Spaniards from the company team led by the Galician physicist and naval engineer Gonzalo Redondo, who is in O Millaoiro, near Santiago de Compostela.

Regarding the role of the Spaniards in the America’s Cup, he indicates that, “This is like football, where we always have a lot of complexes and in the end they win World Cups and it turns out that here we have some of the best in the world and you’re almost ashamed to be told. Also, don’t forget that the Head of Design Of this team, which hopes to be the best, is a Spaniard, Marcelino Botín, and the CFD team, perhaps the most complex, is all made up of Spaniards; it is something to be proud of” .

Having a first generation AC75 in Barcelona before the rest of the teams and being able to train in the regatta fields used for the Cup is key because, “The fact of being here for almost four months is amazing and a real advantage. But you also have to think that we have a crew that has never sailed on these boats and we started from far behind, but they quickly got the hang of the boat with a lot of simulation work to coordinate on board and it has been an opportunity that we are not wasting”.

A key point is, according to him, “that we take all the data that comes to us from the boat in the water and from the simulations where we calibrate and adjust our simulations so that they better represent what is in reality to make decisions” .

As for the Red Bull Racing Formula 1 team engineers who are with them, the man from Madrid considers that, “In principle, it happened to them like it did to me when I arrived and for them sailing is new, but they give them a perspective that you would never have thought of, they are really capable people and together we form a powerful team” .

He is 39 years old, married, and with two children aged 3 and 5. The hardest part of it all for him is, “being away from them. In Barcelona it will be the first time that my wife and children, who will arrive in January and will be with me until the end of the Cup. She has her own business in Madrid and we have been lucky that it is Barcelona because from time to time as soon as he can go there. Besides, we already have a school for those here”.

His wife is Clara Martinez Basse-Korf, captain of the Spanish Underwater Hockey Team, and he is ‘crazy’ about sports, participates in numerous Ironman events, swam across the Strait of Gibraltar and, among other things, created a UltraTriathlon in Madrid. His first job was as a tennis teacher, spending eight years teaching at the Chamartín Tennis Club and we participate as much as we can in the club’s activities.

A staunch follower and both he and his wife are members of Real Madrid, he comments that, “Now we get a little chest, but this goes by neighborhoods and what happens to Barça can happen to Madrid tomorrow”.

His goal is to win the Copa América but he reveals that, “All the teams come to win, we started from a long way behind, we are four years behind with respect to the others. At the design level we are trying to improve everything that could have happened to us in the previous campaign and materially starting from scratch, putting doubt everything we did in the campaign and from there there are new ideas, new concepts to translate into our new boat”.


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