SailGP roars back into action in New York after Rio cancellation

NEW YORK - SailGP teams will shake off the rust in New York this weekend, as the global racing championship gets back into action after a wingsail defect forced a brief hiatus with the cancellation of Mays Rio event.

Organisers identified the defect after the Australian boats wing collapsed in San Francisco in March and carried out repair and upgrade work to remedy the issue on the F50 fleet in time for the highly anticipated New York competition.

We had almost two months of learning to take from the previous events, said Brazils twice Olympic champion Martine Grael, SailGPs first-ever female driver.

We have a lot of changes in our sailing - there are almost too many changes and we know you can only handle a few changes at a time. Were focusing to see what we can adapt here.

The recently added Brazil team hope to move up the standings from 10th as the action kicks off on Saturday at 1 p.m. ET (1700 GMT),two and a half hours earlier than planned due to inclement weather.

The three-times champions Australia, who hold just a one-point advantage over Britain in the standings, want to impress after making headlines off the water, with new A-List co-owners Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds announced this week.

The great equaliser between the celebrity-fronted top dogs and the up-and-comers has been the competitions tech-first approach to sailing, with each of the vessels equipped with 125 sensors continuously feeding data.

We give the data to everybody, SailGPs Chief Technology Officer Warren Jones told Reuters. Top teams hate it, but the newer teams love it.

Jones was able to build the robust analytics operation from a blank sheet of paper by cherry-picking from billionaire co-founder Larry Ellisons Oracle capabilities.

The hope is that the data points