The second season of the AC45 World Series (2012-2013) gets underway on Wednesday in San Francisco with the first qualifying round for the match racing championship with no fleet racing scheduled for this first day of the event. Thanks to the great results they obtained last season, the crew of Energy Team led by Yann Guichard will go directly through to the quarter finals and will have to wait until Friday to compete in their first duel in this Match Racing Championship, when they will be up against Oracle Team USA Coutts.

As for the fleet racing, the eleven crews will be lining up for two races on Thursday afternoon.

Training is already well underway in San Francisco Bay. The wind in excess of twenty knots at times has been offering lively conditions, which are typical of a summer’s day in the bay, which is well known for its many local effects. Energy Team has been battling it out in some friendly duels with their rivals in order to get used to the unique conditions of this race course, where strong currents generate choppy seas, making life tricky for the teams, as three of Energy Team’s rivals saw for themselves with some spectacular capsizes over the past few days. The French team will be continuing to train over the coming days with the same ambition as last year : to beat the world’s best teams.