The return of the Rascals

We speak to Mascalzone Latino manager Tom Weaver about Italy's third America's Cup challenger

One of the most endearing if least successful teams during the last Louis Vuitton Challenge selection series was Mascalzone Latino, aka the Italian Rascals, led by shipping magnate and enthusiastic yachtsman Vincenzo Onorato. For the home crowd in Italy one of the greatest matches of that series was the final heat of the first Round Robins when finally, after three postponements, the two Italian teams lined up: the Rascals against their mighty but under-performing rivals on Prada.

Italian fans were on the edge of their seats in this David and Goliath match, as with Paolo Cian at the helm the underdogs won the start only to choose the wrong side of the first beat. Prada eventually won by a comfortable margin. A few days later at the end of the second round robin it was Mascalzone Latino and not Le Defi Areva who were on their way home with the wooden spoon, the only team not to make it through to the quarter finals.

Following their defeat in Auckland team president Vincenzo Onorato kept the design and management teams ticking along. A few nailbiting months last year saw chief designers John Cutler and Phil Kaiko flying the coup for a record breaking second occasion in this Cup cycle having come to Mascalzone Latino from K-Challenge and then moving on to the Spanish El Reto team, a move that may prove one too many once their case has been passed by the America's Cup Jury (this case has just had its preliminary hearing - click here to read more).

Finally it was on 23 March with less than a month to go until the final entry deadline that the team formally announced their challenge for the 32nd America's Cup with the firm financial backing from Capitalia, a giant Italian banking group who own Banca di Roma and Banca di Sicilia.

While Auckland may have been a case of dipping their toe in the water, this time, says Team Manager Tom Weaver, it will all be different. "The team is fully cranked up and it’s only goal is to win. It is set up that way. We started a bit later than we would have liked but we've started with the confidence to know we can get there.

"I set a schedule out about a year and half ago of where I wanted to be and to be honest we are about one month behind on where we really would like to be. That month means launching new boats in 2006 - that’s what you hinge everything around. If we’d got rolling before Christmas we would have saved that month."

According to Weaver the approach of team President Vincenzo Onorato was similar to that of Peter Harrison - where he wanted to compete in the America's Cup but would only do so for sure once a sponsor came on board. Fortunately in Onorato's case this has come to pass.

Despite the popularity of the America's Cup in Italy and there seeming to be not shortage of sponsorship funds for Cup campaigns, Weaver (left) says that the path to finalising the deal with Capitalia was far from easy. "The biggest problem for us when we started in late 2003 was the Parmalat scandal." That year Parmalat, the Italian food conglomerate and eighth largest industrial group in Italy, was found to have a Enron-style 8 billion Euro black hole in its accounts.

"It just shut everything down in Italy for that year. It wasn’t an economic crisis, but the economy wasn’t great. There was still fall out from September 11, but Parmalat really put a spanner in the works here. Also the first thing people want to do is sponsor the event, but once ACM filled up, they had to move on to the next option and pick a team."

The America's Cup competition coming to Europe has also changed the game. "Having been involved for the past 18 months in selling the project, what you are doing is selling a promise half the time. This Cup is going to be much bigger in Europe than any time before, so putting a dollar value on what it is worth is quite difficult. The running costs of an America’s Cup campaign are about 20 million Euros per year: over four years 80 million Euros. People are amazed and say 'how can justify that?' But I can show you exactly where that money goes and that is being tight, tough on yourselves."

Weaver admits that running costs have gone up this time round - firstly everything is being paid for in relatively strong Euros as opposed to NZ dollars, and the bar has been raised in terms of running a competitive campaign. But the principle difference is that the Cup cycle is one year (or 20 million Euros) more.

The big teams - Alinghi, BMW Oracle Racing, Luna Rossa and Emirates Team Zealand - will of course be spending more money, some a lot more money, but Weaver says the key is in spending the money wisely. "We have enough money and enough good guys to do a really good job. We have identified where we are going to spend our money and we are going to be smart about it - pick the projects and not to run into dead ends.

"The biggest thing about managing the money right now is to identify what makes your boat go fast," he continues. In short you don't want to spend vast quantities of money for research project unless they are going to come to something. Therein lies the problem. "The bigger teams are forced into researching those areas, looking for that extra millionth of a knot of boat speed. We’ll just sit back and see if anything new develops and if they do then we have to have the ability to react to that. This time I think it is just going to be refinement of ideas, but there is always the opportunity for something really smart to come out, but it is going to cost a lot of money to develop that."

With Cutler and Kaiko departed, making these calls now falls on Harry Dunning who has taken over as head of the newly christened Capitalia Design Group. Dunning's appointment comes as little coincidence as Mascalzone Latino have recently acquired the 2002-3 generation Team Dennis Conner and had both boats flown from New Zealand across to Italy and on to their base in Elba where they arrived week before last. Both Stars & Stripes were designed by Reichel Pugh where Dunning was principle designer focussing on these boats during the last Cup cycle, following his tenure at the Farr office where he worked on Young America and TAG Heuer.





Other key members of the design team are aerodynamistic Chris Mairs (formerly with Young America and BMW Oracle Racing), hydrodynamicist Rick Harris (ex BMW Oracle Racing), Joe Laiosa handling the CFD (ex Team Dennis Conner), composites expert Mark McCafferty, Fabrizio Marabini (ex Il Moro di Venezia, Prada) who is the interface between the sailing and design teams and Silvio Arrivabene who was with the team in Auckland. The design team is 14 strong with six on site and the rest working by remote.

The team begin tank testing in Halifax, Canada in two weeks time, but Weaver believes it will be the rig and the aero package where most developments will be made this time around.

The biggest headache for Weaver has been the sudden growth of the team the moment the 'go' button was pushed at the end of March. "For me it is almost overwhelming: Sitting here for a year and a half just to scratch and scratch and tick along, keeping the thing alive and then push the button and suddenly I have 60 people showing up in the yard and boats are being sprayed and boats are on aeroplanes... I have been round the world twice in the past three weeks, finalising the design team and the sailors and all the logistics side of it, then we have got to start working on the base in Valencia. It is a massive part of the organisation. The important part is having the management group that I have all ready, who have been working with me for the last 18 months ready to go."

Among the influx are two complete boat crews. Unlike Luna Rossa and +39 the make-up of the new Capitalia sailing team is predominantly Italian led by the talented keelboat double act of skipper and tactician Vasco Vascotto (left) and helmsman Flavio Flavini. Some non-Italians, who Weaver is unable to name at this stage, are also due to beef up the afterguard and it will be interesting to see if Britain's Adrian Stead, who has been racing a lot with Onorato since the last Cup, will be among them.

With the arrival of the two Stars & Stripes boats their build team have been flat out over the last two weeks converting them to Version 5 before spraying them in their new livery of 'burgundy'. With their two latest acquisitions, the team now own five ACC boats including their 2003 generation boat and the 2000 vintage Team Dennis Conner and Spanish boats. "We had to move a bunch of old boats off the yard to bring the new ones in the other day," recounts Weaver. "Some we’ve kept, some we haven’t sold. Sitting on the base we have a Farr 51, a Swan 45, a Farr 40, a Mumm 30..and five America’s Cup boats." Onorato, for whom Weaver has worked for the last 12 years (less some time sailing with Steve Fossett on PlayStation), is clearly keen about his boating.

At present the team are at their original base in Elba but are set to move to Valencia in June when a base becomes available.

They are obviously obliged to compete in all the America's Cup Acts this year, but Weaver says the major effect of these is not a hike in campaign costs. "They dictate my sailing and testing schedule, because I have to be in certain places in certain trim at a certain time. So we are quite happy to do them, it’s just in the timing of them. Having said that it does focus a lot of our resources and it does give us a real opportunity to check in.

"The one thing that we never knew last time was whether the other boat was in measurement trim. This time when we go into these Acts and we race another boat we know they are a measured America’s Cup boat and they don’t have an over draft keel or a bigger main. You know if you are beating them you are beating them or if you are losing you’re not going very well. So the reality check there is going to be great for our team. And people will not be able to hold back on their develop. They’ll have to bring out their big roach jibs and their stuff which we’ll see, because there is pressure on everyone to perform in these Acts, not necessarily from a points point of view but from a commercial point of view for the sponsors. You can’t afford to be slow. We have a lot of catching up to do but hopefully by the third Act we’ll be going quite well."

While Capitalia are the principle sponsor, additional secondary sponsors will be announced in due course.

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary aspects of the Capitalia team is that they are one of three challenges from Italy, when countries like the US, the event's perennial defender, are only able to field one.

"To be honest, if Alinghi had put the Cup in Italy I think there would have been five," says Weaver. "The economy is so much smaller than for example than Germany or Britain, but we are putting three teams on the line and those two countries are struggling to get one each. I guess the Italians are very passionate about their sailing. It is a glamorous event and they have been in the Cup for a long time and in the Louis Vuitton Cup a few times with the Il Moros and Prada and Azzura. It is quite a tradition here."

There is also considerably more coverage. "The level of coverage is enormous," says Weaver. "I go to a rugby game and sit down next to a couple of guys and I say ‘I work for Mascalzone Latino’. Everyone in the country knows who you are. You sit in a pub in London and say ‘I work for GBR Challenge’ - they wouldn’t have a clue most of the time. In Italy every single person knows the team or they know Vincenzo Onorato."

In the ranking of America's Cup challengers Weaver sees Capitalia hanging on to the 'big three'. "We are targeting that fourth spot. I think we have got a little bit of work to do. There are some very good teams out there but I think we can elevate ourselves into that group, but it will take us the best part of this year to do that."

We shall see...