Winning the three coastal races held during the week, FlyingNikka, the full foiling Maxi owned by Roberto Lacorte and supported by the sponsors TAG Heuer and Cetilar® (a brand of the PharmaNutra pharmaceutical company), won the Maxi Class Line Honours Trophy, awarded to the absolute fastest yacht among the 50 or so Maxis competing in the 33th edition of the Maxi Yacht Rolex Cup in Porto Cervo.
Taking part for the second time following its absolute début last year, the “flying” single-hull FlyingNikka – the world’s first Maxi equipped with T-foils, a development on the boats in the last America’s Cup but designed for offshore regattas– is unrivalled, winning all three regattas held between the islands of the Maddalena Archipelago from Monday to Wednesday (respectively, 35, 46 and 30 miles) well ahead of the rest of the fleet of much larger yachts.
“We really wanted to win the Maxi Class Line Honours Trophy here in Porto Cervo, and I would like to share this success with our extended FlyingNikka family, so the crew, the shore team, our partners and fans… We are undisputedly the fastest yacht in a race against the world’s largest and biggest Maxis, and it was a win we deserved, for all the effort and passion we put into this project,” Roberto Lacorte declared. “This is only the beginning of FlyingNikka’s challenge, and thanks to these regattas we have improved the boat even more, discovering and promptly overcoming new limits. This result is an injection of pure energy for our programme. And it is a huge satisfaction that we also share with our sponsor TAG Heuer, with whom, based on our common approach marked by technology and passion, we continue to work on a project that promises great achievements.”
FlyingNikka won the Maxi Class Line Honours Trophy with an advantage of 1 hour and 46 minutes on the second place, the 100-foot Black Jack, a yacht almost twice the length of the 60-foot FlyingNikka, over a total of around 111 miles covered (the sum of the three coastal races), completed by the boat racing for the Yacht Club Repubblica Marinara di Pisa and the Yacht Club Punta Ala with a final time of around 6 hours and 6 minutes.
On board the FlyingNikka, the skipper Roberto Lacorte, the Team Manager Alessio Razeto, Lorenzo Bressani, Enrico Zennaro, Andrea Fornaro and Lorenzo De Felice.
As mentioned, the support of the partner TAG Heuer is fundamental: in this respect, during the races each team member wears a TAG Heuer Aquaracer Solargraph watch, a timepiece that represents the ultimate sporting performance and durability.
TAG Heuer’s partnership with FlyingNikka heralds the beginning of an exciting new chapter in the brand’s long history of collaborations with innovative, boundary-pushing individuals and organizations. By joining forces with FlyingNikka, TAG Heuer is not only reaffirming its passion for sailing but at the same time also its commitment to innovation, performance, and its never-ending quest for the pioneering mindset.
The other team partners of FlyingNikka are B&G for the on-board electronics, North Sails for the sails, Montura for the official clothing, and the yards in Punta Ala Costa Etrusca and Marina di Punta Ala in Tuscany, the team’s official base.
