Launched in Bermuda, the boat was named ‘Rita’ by Sir Ben Ainslie’s wife Lady Georgie Ainslie and daughter Bellatrix. The name has a winning pedigree – Sir Ben has used it throughout his career.

BAR shared the engineering skills used by Jaguar Land Rover to create its newest models. Aerodynamic, self-learning car, artificial intelligence and virtual-modelling technologies are all helping the boat to go faster.
Jaguar Land Rover( is the UK’s largest investor in automotive research, development and engineering spending billions on new product creation and innovation, the partnership with Land Rover BAR enables the engineers to up-skill and practice new methods in different environment and platforms.

“This process of two-way engineering and our wider STEM programme across the business has enabled us to develop, learn and provide our capabilities to the BAR team. We developed industry-first aerodynamic testing to support the wingsail design which you can see on the final boat here today,” said Tony Harper, Director of Research at Jaguar Land Rover.

From the success of this project, and with our knowledge of analysis and construction of light-weight vehicles, we have also supported the structural design of the daggerboards – the surfboard-style structure underneath the boat that allow it to fly and keep it stable when out of the water.”

Each light-weight daggerboard needs to bear 2,400kg, the equivalent of a new Land Rover Discovery, so their job on the boat is crucial.