Is Ferrari Hypersail the Most Exciting Project in Sport?

The first question is why are Ferrari building a sailing yacht? Their answer is endurance and continuing to push the limits of what can be done. Ferrari are involved in hypercars, winning Le Mans in 2023, 2024 and 2025, which is an area of motorsport where thermodynamic and aerodynamic efficiency are vital, and the cars are designed to extract the maximum distance from a strictly regulated amount of energy. While Le Mans is a 24 hour race, and for Ferrari Hypersail to capture the Round the World record they’re going to have to sail for up to 40 days, energy efficient is at the heart of everything they do, and ideas implemented on the water can, and most likely will, lead to advancements on the track. The proportions of the yacht itself are also extraordinary. 30 metres long, 40 metres high and up to 20 metres wide, this is a foiling monohull like no other. It will dwarf the AC75 and IMOCA yachts, which are the closest relations to it currently on the water. Only the giant Ultim trimarans can rival this for scale and speed. This brings us on to the question of why a monohull? After all, the Ultim trimarans are known as the kings when it comes to round the world record attempts. The answer is to minimise drag. They have carefully modelled the different designs, and believe that the Ferrari Hypersail significantly reduces wind resistance compared to a multihull. A foiling offshore monohull will however require an autostable design to sail at all the regular angles to the wind and at all wind speeds. Here, the pitch, yaw and roll systems on board the yacht are all being developed in house. As with all modern performance cars, these systems are ‘fly by wire’, and rely on accurate haptic feedback to ensure that the sailors gain the necessary ‘feel’ from the yacht, and we’ll hear more about that later. Whichever way you look at this project, the scale of the challenge is daunting. When it comes to human power, the Ferrari Hypersail team are developing the E-Pedestal, which does away with the traditional gearing and mechanical systems, and they are finding it to be more efficient while also eliminating the problem all sailors who have used a winch will be familiar with: the last few centimetres of winding being the hardest. I spoke to Team Leader Marco Ribigini about how they aimed to use human power, as well as rig efficiency, when the boat will be ready for a round the world record attempt, and what the project means to him personally. Enrico Voltolini has a huge amount of sailing experience in the America’s Cup and SailGP, so I talked to him about the foil design, the extraordinary engineering required for the foil arms, the energy requirements of going around the world, and how this project, pushing the boundaries of what is possible, is driving him forwards. Matteo Lanzavecchia, Chief Technology Officer at Ferrari Hypersail isn’t a sailor, but plays a vital role in the team, bringing cutting-edge automotive technology to the sailing world. I spoke to him about haptic feedback, the wind turbines they are developing, whether a kinetic energy generation system they are proposing will actually become part of the final design and whether this project will get him into sailing personally. However you look at Ferrari Hypersail, it is an astounding project. The fact that Ferrari have decided to enter the sailing world can only be good for the sport, with the brand association alone being a major plus. The innovations developed here have the potential to benefit sailors everywhere, and could represent a step-change in how things are traditionally done. The team are approaching problems from an entirely new angle, and are bringing their vast knowledge into a yacht that is breaking the mold in so many ways. Will they break records with this yacht? Quite possibly. Will they set a new Jules Verne Trophy record around the world? Maybe. What will the record be when they are ready, with Gitana 18 testing at the moment, and capable of extraordinary speeds? Catch a favourable weather pattern and it could be closer to 30 days than the current 40. This is the new frontier for sailing. Trying an absolutely new approach to sailing, which could even feed back technologies into the automotive world. Watching it all unfold is going to be fascinating.