"Do we want to be in this situation? No. Are we slower than we need to be? Absolutely? Do we have the resources to keep going? Absolutely." So says Laurent Esquier, the man at the centre of the Prada maelstrom.

This is Esquier's 10th America's Cup. He has been part of the scene since 1974. In his second stint as Prada's Operations Director, Esquier's pressing task is to turn Patrizio Bertelli's team around.

Esquier's blueprint is in tatters: "It's unconventional for sure, changing your boat after the first round robin. On the other hand there is never a winner who goes about things in the conventional way. There is no strategy behind this; it is simply a case of doing what we need to do to improve our chances of winning. That's the bottom line."

He is the man who can answer the question on many lips: just how did Prada end up in this pickle? In Round Robin 1, they sidelined Gavin Brady, ousted design director Doug Peterson, and failed to produce the performance of a credible front-line challenger.

What was to blame: the design tools or the designers?

"Yes, some of the investigations we made, we either interpreted the results the wrong way or we had different results from different tools or we picked the wrong tool to give us the answer," explains Esquier. "The design tool only gives you what you read. For sure there are always personality issues. Every single camp has one or two in their closet. But were personality issues the major obstacle to development? I think it would be pretty brave to draw that conclusion."

The response has been radical surgery. In the space of five days, ITA 74 has a remodelled bow and a new piece grafted on. ITA 80, which has yet to race in anger, is undergoing wholesale change at Cookson's.

"In two weeks' time there is no more runway. That's why we have decided to act positively," explains Esquier. "That's where Mr Bertelli was instrumental. He said 'Don't wait. Don't cross-check. We don't have time to go through incremental changes of a bit of mainsail roach here and bit of trim there. Do the changes we have to now!'."

Ask Esquier what ITA 74's problems were, beyond speed, and he admits the boat lacked balance: "Let's say the bow and the other changes will help. Yes, we would have liked to trim the main in more." He is quick to acknowledge that skipper Francesco de Angelis had squeezed maximum juice out of the boat in her old form. "I have seen a lot of sailors and in terms of developing the tool he has been given, Francesco is way up there."

Will the radical surgery work? Prada doesn't yet know. Clearly they are not banking on their design tools to give them guaranteed answers. "You take some information from the CFD, the tank, the feelings on the boat," continues Esquier, "and you put them together and say 'Guys, we don't have three months to test these, we have six working days'. So you take your best guess. You hope that through the six or seven optimisations you have made, the majority are positive ones."

For Prada's sake, you have to hope that one of the darts they have thrown into the air finds the bulls-eye.
Tim Jeffery, 22 October 2002