Team Brunel wins this 10th leg of the Volvo Ocean Race - the second stage victory in a row after the Cardiff leg - with a line crossing at 22:42 (French time) on Thursday 14th June. MAPFRE followed him very closely - 1 minute and 55 seconds apart - and thus regained the lead in the overall classification, tied on points with Team Brunel and with a one-point lead over Dongfeng Race Team, fourth in Sweden. The final leg to The Hague, which will set off from Gothenburg on 21st June - only 700 miles long - will be extremely intense, as the winner of this 2017-2018 edition will only be known at the end of the race...
For this 10th stage is once again a reminder of the importance of the race and gives the inseparable trio the hope of overall victory. Whereas at the start in Cardiff they all stood on three points, they are now separated by only 1 point... And it can even be said that they are tied since Dongfeng Race Team third with 64 points, one less than MAPFRE and Team Brunel, will pocket in The Hague, barring major damage, the bonus point offered to the team with the best cumulative time over the whole race. This means that the order of finish between these three in The Hague will be the same as the final podium in the Volvo Ocean Race!
Team Brunel - which we won't stop on this second part of the Round the World Tour - has once again made a name for itself... Bouwe Bekking's crew, then sixth in the general standings, finished last in the sixth stage in Auckland at the end of February, 19 points behind the leader, MAPFRE, and 14 points behind Dongfeng Race Team. Since leaving New Zealand, out of a maximum of 47 possible points, they have racked up 45, winning the double-handed stages of Itajai (with the bonus point at Cape Horn) and Cardiff, finishing second in Newport, before winning this Thursday in Sweden.
However, nothing was certain as Team Brunel was in 6th place on Wednesday 13th June, around ten miles from MAPFRE, who managed to make the most of a ridge of high pressure to the west of Ireland. However, Bouwe Bekking's crew was able to take advantage of the strong downwind conditions in the North Sea to get ahead of their rivals.
"We've done a fantastic job, the result is beyond what we expected. The objective was to finish in front of the two red boats, to win the stage is really magnificent. At the end, we had to keep sailing as fast as we could, we didn't have to do anything. It could have been tempting to take a bigger sail on the last run, but it was only a 14-minute tack, we had to stay calm and do the same things, I'm really happy with the way we finished this stage" Bouwe Bekking, who could win his first Volvo Ocean Race (8 participations to his credit), commented just after crossing the line, and what's more, he is at home!
Team Brunel is now third overall as it leaves Wales, and is now second on equal points with MAPFRE, who is back in the lead thanks to a better ranking than the Dutch team in the In-Port Series (which is used to separate teams tied on points in the overall standings).
Dongfeng, who finished fourth behind AkzoNobel, 33 min 51 s behind the winner of the day, is doing badly on this stage, penalised in the North Sea by a speed deficit which his rivals took advantage of. " We've had a big speed problem in the last 24 hours, we've lost a lot, we've checked everything, we haven't seen anything, I don't know, maybe it's at the end of the keel, said skipper Charles Caudrelier. We are now all in the same point if we include our cumulative time bonus point, for all of you, for the fans of the race, it's going to be a very exciting finish, for us too. All we have to do is finish in front of the others, we'll give it our all and try to get our first stage win, that would be fantastic."
