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Racing on the Edge

Season 6

6 episodes2026Latest season

Season 6 · Episode 6

Latest episode

Letting Go

A story about letting go of the thing that made you special. Nicolai turned his crew into the fastest on water, but chasing speed cost them a season, and when France take their record he must choose who they need to become.

Notes from the director

We Crash, We Fly

Robert McKee taught me that "story is metaphor for life and life is lived in time", so we stretched those seconds as far as they would go.

Sometimes the thing that makes you special is the thing holding you back. For Denmark it was speed. They became the fastest team on water, with a banner on their container to prove it, and somewhere along the way they stopped winning. This film is about a man deciding who he wants his team to be, and what he's willing to give up to get there.

Sassnitz gave us everything at once. A broken finger in practice. A size-16 foot in Ed's face. A hydraulic failure on race morning with no backup, and Nicolai saying he was happy to take the risk. Then the run to the first mark: Denmark at 106, then the crash, then France flying past at 107. In the edit we stretched those seconds as far as they would go, because I wanted you to feel the wonder of that speed and then the cost of it. And there's so much humanity in this team. The race director turns out to be the grandad of Ed's daughter, and he tells us he isn't worried about "the father of my granddaughter". Nicolai, sore from going from 106 to zero, says: "We crash, we fly. Whatever we do, we do it together."

The quietest moment is the most important one: the Danes walking their banner over to the French and handing it to Quentin. Then comes Valencia, with almost no wind, where speed is useless and patience is everything, and Denmark make their first final since June 2024. At the end I put it to Nicolai that it was only when he let go of the record that they started to go up. "Sometimes it's nice to let things go," he said. We all hold on to something that once made us proud, long after it stopped helping us. I even left my own voice in at the very end, asking him for one last favour: win.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S06E06
P1 Entertainment

Empathy (billed to the BBC as "Winning Cultures"), episode artwork

Season 6 · Episode 5

Start here

Empathy (billed to the BBC as "Winning Cultures")

A story about the strength in being vulnerable. We're in the room as Spain's crew discover who they really are and Nicole opens up about her mother's illness, while Canada prefer beers. Under pressure, empathy carries Spain to victory.

Notes from the director

The Space Between People

Paul Zak found that character-driven stories consistently make the brain release oxytocin, and the more it released, the more willing people were to help others (Harvard Business Review, 2014).

Empathy is a very hard thing to film. It lives inside people and in the space between them, in a tone of voice or a silence, and it never happens on cue. Some of it you catch by being there. We were in the room when Ben handed Spain's crew their personality reports and they saw themselves on paper for the first time. The rest you have to earn. A teammate's old joke from a bike ride, that Nicole doesn't like to suffer, opened the door to the childhood that shaped her. People don't say those things to a camera. They say them to a small crew they've come to trust, and only when they know it will be handled with care.

Then the edit. We put two teams side by side, Spain with psychology and Canada with beers and banter, and let the racing test both ideas without making either one the joke. We went through hours of onboard audio for the tiny human things that decide a race: a teammate breathing into an open mic, a countdown nobody hears, Diego's "Joel, time to fly, mate!" And when Florian steps on the wrong button with Spain leading the final, we stay with it long enough to watch the crew absorb the mistake instead of breaking over it. At the end I asked Ben what happens when a whole crew does this at the same time. "A thing of absolute beauty," he said. I couldn't have put it better.

What people take away is recognition. Most of us know Nicole's feeling that letting others down is worse than letting yourself down, and most of us have worked somewhere a bad moment could tip into blame. You laugh along as grown adults squabble in children's boats, you go quiet when Nicole talks about her mother, and you hold your breath through the final. And you leave thinking about your own team.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S06E05
P1 Entertainment

Season 6 · Episode 4

The Power of Opportunity

A story about how one open door can change many lives. We go back with Kai to the London school where a teacher first put him in a boat, while Anna carries the pressure of being the first woman in her role, as both face defining moments.

Notes from the director

The Door Is Real

Adam Curtis taught me you can make a point "visually and emotionally at the same time as you are saying it intellectually."

This is a film about doors, and the people who hold them open. Kai grew up in north London at a state school where sailing simply didn't exist, until a teacher called Jon decided it should. The school's first boat was a wreck he found on eBay, sitting in a farmer's field in Birmingham. Eight of them couldn't even get it off the trailer. Now Kai works with Emirates GBR's shore crew, training for a place on the boat itself. Anna is the other side of the same coin. She's doing something no woman has done before in this league, and she has spent a long time fighting the voice that says she doesn't belong. A man on a tour once said, "Oh my God, they let women in here." She still wishes she'd had a better comeback.

The hardest part was the shape. Kai's story is years of small steps. Anna's came to a head in one afternoon in New York, in front of her parents, when three boats collided and took away a final she could already taste. On this show we don't get to choose our endings. We follow what happens and build the film around it. In the edit I kept pushing on one thing: Kai's little race with five kids on a London reservoir had to mean something next to the final in New York, not just look clever. It works when his "just keep driving" to the kids plays over the final.

Jon says you get a lump in your throat when you see Kai out on the F50. That's the whole point of the film. Somewhere, a kid watching sees someone from a place like theirs and understands that the door is real. And Anna, in tears, thanks the people who love her for who she is, and a young sailor tells her she's an inspiration.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S06E04
P1 Entertainment

Season 6 · Episode 3

This Is Us

A story about carrying a family name and a nation's hopes. Martine brings the league home to Rio with her father, Torben, beside her, but when her boat can't even leave the dock before thousands, the homecoming becomes a test of resilience.

Notes from the director

A Love Letter, Delayed

Sometimes a father's way of saying I love you is telling you it's just sailing.

Rio was meant to be a love letter. The league was arriving in South America for the first time, Martine was bringing it home, and her dad, Torben, was on the boat with her. Then a modem failed and the boat couldn't leave the dock. Thousands of people in the stands, music playing, and the home team stuck in front of them. We didn't fight it. The waiting became the film: Torben gone silent with anger, Alan, the man who made the event happen, in shock, and Catarina getting the news on the phone in the grandstand.

In the edit the film became two stories running side by side. One is a daughter and her father. The other is a team trying to make a whole country fall in love with a new sport. To get underneath Martine, we went with her and her brother Marco back to the streams and tunnels around Auckland where they spent part of their childhood. She told us something was taken from her when she was young, and she's not sure she ever got that confidence back. To do this job, she says, she needs a thicker skin. Everyone sees the famous name. She sees a character she has to dress up as.

So when Torben kisses her and tells her it's just sailing, it lands. When the boat finally goes out, the crowd chants, the Senna anthem plays, and she feels like a bride arriving late to her own wedding. After racing she turns the boat round and sails past the stands one more time. Brazil won nothing that weekend, and it doesn't matter. It's a film about seeing yourself in the people who carry your flag, and about a father who says I love you in his own way. Catarina found the words for all of it: "This is me, this is us."

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S06E03
P1 Entertainment

Season 6 · Episode 2

The Art of Risk

A story about how failure can teach you control. After a brutal crash shakes everyone, Phil keeps trusting his instinct and pays for it, while Tash, shaped by her own past failures, calmly guides her crew to their first win in over a year.

Notes from the director

Living With Risk

The most honest way to show a crash is through the people who lived it.

This is a film about how we live with risk, and Auckland made it painfully real. On the first day, the Kiwi boat lost control at full speed and collided with the French. Two sailors went to hospital. With a crash like that, the question is never whether to show it. It's how. We told it the way the fleet lived it: through the race control radio, through Lisa, who watched the injured being lifted off the boat, and through Liv, who still wakes up at night with pieces of it coming back. Nobody needs to see more than that to understand.

Around that moment sit two people with very different relationships with danger. Phil has fought for everything, because nobody ever handed him anything. We spent time with his family in Auckland: Phil fussing over his mum's cappuccino, his brother pointing out that his name has been spelt wrong for twenty years, and the famous axe story, which Phil swears he doesn't remember. Tash is the opposite. Years ago she lost the one thing she'd given half her life to, and it nearly made her stop sailing. She never wants to feel that again, so she studies and she prepares, and in the final she makes the call that gives Australia their first win in a year. Tom says she never hesitates.

Somewhere in the grandstand you'll also find me, with Phil's brother and his little nephew, shouting "Who are we rooting for?" until the kid screams his uncle's name. I love that moment. It's the warmth this film needs next to the fear. Risk is part of any life worth living. What changes everything is the way you carry it.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S06E02
P1 Entertainment

Season 6 · Episode 1

Flight at Breaking Point

A story about being the youngest in a room full of people you admire. Embedded with the crew from day one, we follow Leo, hand-picked by Pete and Blair, as two costly collisions force him to silence his doubts and prove he belongs.

Notes from the director

Learning to Fly

Stacy Peralta makes sure his films tell "a universal story so that everyone feels welcome", and that became our reset for Season 6.

Season 6 was a reset for us. I wanted more time with people away from the races, and I wanted the sport explained so simply that nobody watching ever feels left out. Leo was the perfect way in. He's the youngest in a room full of people he admires, and his job is to keep the boat flying right at the edge of control. Everyone knows that feeling: being new, being watched, and being terrified of being the one who gets it wrong.

Leo doesn't talk much about fear, so we had to find places where you could see it. After the collision in Perth, we filmed him going up in a tiny plane with his dad and Blair. On paper it's a day off. On screen it's the whole film: height, balance, trust, and an older teammate quietly showing a younger one that he belongs. Then Auckland. Home crowd, a race won, and the decision to push again. Seconds later the boat disappears in white water.

Where to end was the big decision. We could have told you straight away who was hurt. We stopped where everybody on the shore was, not knowing, because that is the truth of this sport and the price of living on that edge. I hope people feel the knot in the stomach of being new, the relief when someone senior puts an arm around you, and the fear that comes back the moment you dare to push.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S06E01
P1 Entertainment

Racing on the Edge

Season 5

13 episodes

Season 5 · Episode 13

Season finale

Racing for Glory

A story about risking everything on one decision. As Hollywood buys into the Australian team, Pete loses a fingertip two days before the final but races on, and Dylan, in last place, bets his reputation on one daring move to win it all.

Notes from the director

Don't Be Like Me

Tie your happiness to your result and it can be a very lonely journey.

A finale has a different job. Every story we've followed all season has to land in one weekend, and we don't get to choose what happens. Two days before the Grand Final, Pete chops off the tip of his finger. His text to Lucinda says, "I've had a bit of an accident. Don't worry too much." That's so Pete. Spain take a massive risk at the last start, "Is there space, Cardona?" "Yes, there is! Trust me!", and still miss the Grand Final by one point. Toni's answer is perfect: there's always next season, now let's have a good time.

We followed Dylan all season, and this is where it pays off. Back in season one he was furious when he lost the boat, and Ben remembers telling him, "I know you're pissed off right now... just hang in there." Five years later Dylan is in the Grand Final, and he's last. Then his team pulls off the JK, two turns in one, one of the hardest manoeuvres there is, and splits away from the others. The wind shifts their way and they win the whole thing. His first feeling, he says, is honestly relief. I love that he's honest enough to say relief. That's what five years feels like.

But the line I'll remember from this season is Tom's, about his son Leo. One day he'll tell him the story of Abu Dhabi, and his message will be: don't be like me. It can be a lonely journey if you tie your happiness to your result. He wants his kids to be happy in everything they do, because winning isn't everything for his son, the way it was for him. We put it right after he loses the Grand Final. To me, that's what this series has always been about: what the racing does to people.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E13
P1 Entertainment

Breaking Point: The Sassnitz Miracle, episode artwork

Season 5 · Episode 10

As seen in the press

Breaking Point: The Sassnitz Miracle

A story about finding the courage to go back out. Quentin is left fighting for breath after a violent crash, with his pregnant partner on shore, yet the next day he is back racing and goes on to lead France to one of the greatest comebacks the league has seen.

Notes from the director

Going Back Out

Holding one truth back until the end can change the meaning of everything before it.

This one is about going back out. On Friday the wind comes up much more than anyone planned for, and France's rudder snaps at around 90 km/h. Quentin is thrown over the wheel, destroys it, and ends up in his teammate's seat. He says he just couldn't breathe, and that it was a bit strange. That's how he describes it. Brazil's boat breaks too, and Martine runs to Paul to see if he's okay. Material can be replaced, she says. Crew members are unique.

Friday night nobody knows if they should race. Russell tells the drivers to sleep on it and leaves the decision to them. One of them skips the morning meeting for a pancake. And Quentin is back out there. What I love is that the miracle isn't only his. The American boat hits a mark, loses its bow and crashes into the British one, so overnight the boat builders cut a piece out of one boat and bond it into the other. Luke, who leads them, says it's more like trench warfare than modern art. The love of it, he says, is rolling the boat out in the morning when nobody expected them to pull it off. GBR makes it at the very last minute. We were in the shed with them, and to me those guys are the heroes of this film.

Then France win the whole thing. Lisa says it perfectly: you started the week going to hospital and you just won a Grand Prix. But we held one thing back until the very end. On the pier after the crash, Quentin was focused on not stressing his girlfriend, who was there in Sassnitz. Only at the end do you find out she's pregnant, and that when he comes ashore a winner, the first woman he sees is her. Suddenly the crash, the pier and the decision to go back out all mean something else.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E10
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 12

The Last Seat

A story about what happens when others control your future. Pete reveals how his future with another team was decided while he was away on a family holiday, Joan returns to Spain's boat after heart surgery, and Dylan dives under the Kiwis to win.

Notes from the director

Four Teams, Three Seats

When so much of your future is decided by others, what you love is the one thing that stays yours.

Four teams, three seats, and a lot of people whose future is in somebody else's hands. Pete tells us his departure from another team unfolded very quickly while he was away on a family holiday. I asked him if they wanted him to stop SailGP. Not in those words, he said. It was more a long period of uncertainty where they had control over his time. Then I asked if he thought it was fair. It's sport, he said, a cutthroat game, and if you're not happy, you pick a different path. Lisa says that when she sees Pete now, he's sort of a free man.

Joan has heart surgery and only arrives hours before racing. You can feel in the morning briefing that the plan isn't shared, and Spain finish the first race dead last at home. Toni says the team is nearly burned. Then we get Ben, who helps them work together, sitting at a table with Toni talking about technique, behaviour and emotion, and telling us about the one-to-ones he had with most of the team. What energy do you want to bring today? On Sunday Spain win a race, and Joan's calls are spot on. Florian says leaving your ego at the door is very quickly said and can take a lifetime.

And then there's Tom, a really relaxed version of him, travelling with Nell and their little boy Leo, with another boy on the way. Leo gets dog poo all over his shoe, and Tom's solution is Crocs. Nell says Tom can be very inside himself, and that being a dad has made him more loving and caring than ever. His big wish now, she tells us, is to keep sailing long enough for his boys to watch him and say, that's Dada. Dylan dives under the Kiwis to win the final and says it's hard because it's worth it. But with so much of this season decided by other people, Tom's wish stayed with me. It's the one thing nobody can take from him.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E12
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 11

Waiting for Wind

A story about enduring when everything seems to slip away. Spain fight to stay alive as Nathan returns with a new team and starts luring rivals' sailors away; Erik's crew finally win, and Spain survive the only way they know: suffering first.

Notes from the director

When Nothing Happens

Waiting is the cruellest kind of pressure, because hope drains out slowly.

The hardest thing to film is nothing happening. In Geneva the wind just goes. Spain need one more race or their season is over, and all anyone can do is sit on the water and wait. Florian describes it so well: he's trying to stay positive, and at the same time he can feel the hope draining out of him. Nicole says you start praying for any ounce of wind. For a few minutes this film is just people looking at the water, and to me it's as tense as any race.

Then Seb does something I love. He breaks away from the fleet and sails towards the grandstand, partly to show the race committee there's breeze coming, and partly, he says, to give the crowd a last thank you in case that was it. The wind comes. Spain win the race and stay alive. Afterwards Florian says the Spanish way of winning is suffering all the way through. I asked him why. He said he didn't know, but it's taking years off his life. And Erik's team, who we'd followed through all those penalty points, win their first ever event, with Erik shouting that he can't see the finish.

Off the water there's another storm. A new team is coming, and suddenly everyone is trying to poach everyone. Toni says people are approaching his guys while they're racing. I asked Jimmy if he was looking for a new crew member, and he told me they don't discuss strategy openly, especially not with Racing on the Edge. Fair. In the end this is a film about luck, and how hard it is to accept. Nicole says it's better to be lucky than good. Toni says they don't have a plan, they have a flan. Lisa says it's scary how much is out of our control. And Erik says all that joy came so close to not happening at all.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E11
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 9

Penalty Point

A story about redefining success. Hit by an unprecedented penalty and torn by turmoil, Erik's team lose their purpose; we're in the room as they recommit, come within a gust of a first final at home, and learn to enjoy the ride.

Notes from the director

Opening the Next Box

A bad result is only a picture of where you are now, not of who you'll become.

Erik is endlessly curious. He's got a farm. He's studying medicine, and he shows us his anatomy books, while pointing out it's not a huge collection. His mum is baking and he's making the pizza sauce himself. He describes his life as opening boxes: every new project shows you a whole world you have to learn. So I asked him how big the box of SailGP is. "Exactly!" he said. "That was the next box!"

That openness gets tested hard this season. A record twelve penalty points in a single warm-up day. Their boss jokes that they might as well be pirates now, then says it's a joke, because otherwise it would be really sad for the team. Erik stays neutral. To him a bad result is just a picture of where you are now, not what you'll be. We were in the meeting that was meant to be a half-year review and turned into something else, a place where people needed to get things out of their system. Then, in Erik's hometown, they secretly turn small boats into a mini SailGP to train their starts.

Sassnitz is a seaside town hours from the nearest big city, and the hill is packed. Minutes after the team signs the deal to come back, they win the first race at home, and their boss gets emotional. Erik just reminds everyone it's only the first day. In the last race they pull off a beautiful move at the bottom mark and climb into a place in the final, and then the French find the perfect bit of wind and take it away. What I love is how Erik takes it. Being so driven for the end result, he says, you forget to enjoy the journey. His father used to tell him you can't dance at every wedding at the same time. He's still dancing at all of them, and I hope he never stops.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E09
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 8

Redemption on the Solent

A story about swallowing your pride to win back what you lost. Dropped years ago, Dylan once worked in hospitality at the very events he used to race. Back at the wheel at home, he walks the line between confidence and arrogance.

Notes from the director

The Other Side of the Fence

Before you judge someone's confidence, find out what it cost them.

Dylan can come across as arrogant. He knows it, and he says that at this level you need a little bit of that. But I wanted people to see where it comes from before they judge it. He was the first driver ever announced in this league, and after one season the boat was taken away from him. He ended up working in hospitality, giving tours. One day he was standing outside the British tent, looking in at everyone, and he calls it heart-wrenching. He wanted to be on the other side of the fence. So when people call him arrogant, think about those tours.

His dad explains a lot. He grew up in Bolton, wasn't even allowed on the school bus because he did ballet, and became principal dancer of the Royal Ballet. Dylan says it's literally Billy Elliot. From his parents he learned about auditions: you keep putting yourself on the line until a door opens, and then you pounce. His dad says you've got to sell it, be a performer. Then he admits he tries not to watch his son race, because he's not a very good spectator. I couldn't resist poking at the rivalry with Giles a little, too. Giles said I was trying to ham it up. Guilty.

Portsmouth is home: 20,000 people in the grandstand and a giant picture of Dylan. I asked him who that was. "No pressure," he said. He wins the first race, goes from ninth to third in another, and wins the fleet racing. Then he loses the final to the Kiwis and says they got lucky, and Pete says Dylan always seems to say some interesting things at the end of events. To me that's the film: the fine line between confidence and arrogance, and a guy learning where it is. As he puts it, if you play a game of pool with your mates, you don't have to win.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E08
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 7

Helmswoman's Ascent to First Fleet Race Glory

A story about trusting your instincts when others doubt you. After early disappointments, Martine twice takes the path no one else dares in New York, and in only her sixth event wins her first race, silencing the doubters.

Notes from the director

Turning Left When Others Turn Right

Sometimes the bravest thing you can do is take the path nobody else dares.

Lisa explains it better than anyone. Imagine a woman taking the field for Real Madrid's men's team. In SailGP the boats are all the same, so this is one of the very few places where a woman lines up against the best men with exactly the same tools. That's the weight Martine carries. But to me this isn't a film about a symbol. It's about a person who wants to win one race, and keeps not winning it.

In Los Angeles she leads, and Tom slips past her right at the end. Then comes her worst event of the season. Then her home event in Rio is cancelled, after a defect is found in the wings. Russell tells her, "We all know how fricking hard it is," and, "I know you're impatient." In New York she leads again, and Tom takes it back again. By then you're feeling it with her. The next day she turns left when the champions turn right, steals the lead, and this time nobody takes it away. Martine says it best: the smile on everybody's faces describes it all.

The moment that stays with me comes after. They miss the final by one point, and we asked Lisa what a win like this would have changed for her. Five years ago she had to choose between fighting for a seat she might never get to race in, or building a different life. She couldn't see the future, so she chose the other path. Then she says that if she got the chance to race again, she'd probably take it. The person telling the story turned out to have her own. Fans from Bengal and Mexico come up to cheer Martine, and Lisa says what all of this really is: change.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E07
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 6

The Crew From The Lake

A story about the weight of being the one who decides. Sébastien has rebuilt his crew and is buckling under the pressure, until we follow him to a surprise meeting with Roger, a hero from another sport, who teaches him to see it as a privilege.

Notes from the director

Where's the Fire?

Pressure is a privilege: it means you're the one who gets to decide.

Every quiet person gets asked the same question sooner or later: where's the fire? Somebody asks Seb exactly that, and he says he has a bit of a Swiss, humble personality, so maybe it's hard to read his emotions. I love that answer, because the whole film is about it. After two really difficult years he does something brave. He replaces most of his crew with guys from the lake he grew up on. One lives across the road. They grew up racing each other. There's even a bee on the boat, which in French, Seb explains, is a bit like being stubborn.

And then it doesn't work. Dubai hurts, and you can see it on his face when Lisa catches him after racing. He starts to answer, stops, and just says, "Sorry. I'm just tired." Tanguy sees it too. He sets up a meeting in Zurich and won't tell Seb who he's going to meet. We were there when Seb walked in and found Roger. That was a big moment for him, because, as he says, anyone in Switzerland dreams of meeting him.

We cut that conversation into the racing in San Francisco, so Roger's words land while Seb is living them. Embrace the pressure. Being a decision maker is a privilege. It's good to be nervous, because it means you care. Seb leads, loses it, gets the win back on a French penalty, and then the door to the final opens and closes again in the last race. They miss it. But Seb says, "We always came back," and you can feel something has shifted. What he takes away is simple, and I think it's the best thing anyone can take from this film: it's achievable. It's not impossible.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E06
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 5

Start Again

A story about starting again when everything feels broken. Last year's champions slump as their communication breaks down, and Diego, who quietly overcame years of chronic pain, leads them back by valuing how they win over winning.

Notes from the director

Not a Reality Show

Robert McKee wrote that "in a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility."

Everybody wants to film the win. I'm more interested in what comes after it. A few months after the title, Spain can't get a start right, and the reason is a really difficult thing to talk about as a team. Joan says it as kindly as he can: Diego has a lot of ideas in his head, and it's tough to put new ones in. That's not an easy thing to say about a teammate, on camera.

Their first answer is to give Diego the whole plan. Nicole jokes, watching him sail on his own in a tiny one-person boat, that this is how he'll sail in Los Angeles. It doesn't work. They're last again, and Joan tells the camera it doesn't have to record all day: "This is not a reality show." We kept that in. It's honest, and it shows what it costs a team to let cameras in on the bad days. The real answer comes the Monday after, in an honest conversation while Diego is away at meetings. New ideas come out of it, and for the first time Bernardo is really listened to.

In San Francisco the starts finally click. Then, in the final, Spain start last, and that's exactly where we tell Diego's story. Years ago he started having big pain in his back at night. It was an inflammation of the spine, and some doctors talked about a wheelchair. Five years of pills, then he changed the way he lived, and it kind of disappeared. He says he was lucky to have good support, and that it's not so different from trusting your teammates out there. We put it inside the race on purpose, so while you watch them come back from last, you know he's done it before. Joan spots the current on the left, Spain go from last to first, and Diego says the thing I keep coming back to: when you win, you realise nothing changes. What matters is how you won.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E05
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 4

Fear of Failure

A story about the fear that comes with finally getting what you wanted. Ben hands Dylan the wheel as old rival Giles leaves to lead another team, and both men must face each other and the dread of letting people down.

Notes from the director

Two Kinds of Fuel

Errol Morris calls it "allowing people the scope to say the unexpected", and Giles's "Mate, don't" is exactly that.

Two men and one decision that neither of them got to make. Ben picked Dylan over Giles for another boat, and when the new season starts, Giles is driving Canada and Dylan is sitting in his old seat. Giles told us, very calmly, that it wasn't his decision to make, and asked whether he was supposed to sit there and cry about it. You can feel how much that calm costs him.

What fascinated me is that they're driven by opposite things. Giles says fear of failure has always pushed him, and admits it's not the healthiest fuel. Dylan says his fear is tiny compared to the dream of success. We built the Sydney final around those two voices, so they answer each other while the race is happening. Giles takes the lead, and Dylan steals it back on the last upwind. Afterwards Pete tries to console him, "We were all cheering for you," and Giles can only manage, "Mate, don't." It's the most honest second in the film.

Then, in Los Angeles, it turns. Giles wins, and Phil tells us that maybe in the past Giles was winning for someone else, and now he is winning for himself. Billy only finds out they're winning near the very end, when the boys start hooting and hollering, because they never tell him. That gave us the laugh we needed. Giles says he wants his family to be proud and his peers to respect him, and admits he has an ego, like almost every sportsman. Everybody has been passed over for something. This film is about what you do with that feeling.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E04
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 3

Quentin's Gold

A story about learning not to be haunted by the past. Twice heartbroken at the final hurdle and stuck ashore waiting for a new boat, Quentin returns to chaos and a collision, and learns to fix his eyes on the goal.

Notes from the director

Racing the Ghost

I've learned to show the past at the exact moment it's in someone's head, and not a second before.

Some defeats don't stay in the past. They sit in the boat with you. Quentin came into this season carrying San Francisco, where France were better than everyone for a day and then threw away their place in the final in one collision. He told us that coming ashore and seeing Bruno's eyes was the toughest moment. Then France had to wait two events for a boat, so he couldn't even race the ghost away.

Sydney gave us chaos: wings breaking, boats colliding, and a night when the shore crew worked until the early hours to get eleven of the twelve boats back on the water. I'm glad we gave those people their moment, because they're the unsung heroes of every event. But the heart of the film is one decision. On Sunday, Quentin meets Spain in a marginal cross and asks, "Can I make leebow or not?" At that exact moment we cut back to San Francisco, to the last time he faced them, so you feel the ghost with him. This time he takes the safe option.

He didn't win in Sydney. But he told us that winning is a process that takes a whole career, and that maturity means not rushing anything. Bruno, who has spent his life asking what separates first from second, calls Quentin "a little gold mine" that he hasn't yet found the best way to dig. The title comes from that line. Anyone who has been afraid of repeating their worst moment will recognise this film, and the strength it takes to choose patience over pride.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E03
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 2

Telepathic Combos

A story about leaving the partnership that defined you. Kyle walks away from Tom's crew to join a brand-new team, a move that stuns everyone, and soon faces the most anxious days on the water of his life.

Notes from the director

Fifteen Years Side by Side

Walking away from the person who knows you best is its own kind of heartbreak.

This is a break-up film. Kyle and Tom sailed side by side for fifteen years, and then Kyle left to join a brand-new team. It's a quiet heartbreak, but you feel it everywhere. Tom admits Kyle "went a little quiet" before the news. Kyle says it wasn't only a sporting decision, it was a relationship decision. And in the first days without him, Tom keeps looking to his right, where Kyle used to be.

The way into a story like this is the small human things. Kyle telling his little boy that Daddy sails "the pizza boat" now. His kids still cheering for Australia. A meme from his old team that makes everyone laugh, and makes Tom hope Kyle is okay. Then the season does what only real life can do: in Kyle's very first event, his slow new boat is the one that keeps Tom's crew out of the final. You couldn't write it.

We let Florian give the film its heart. He compares a deep partnership to love: there's a honeymoon, and then something grows that's hard to describe, but you recognise it the moment the pressure comes. Kyle says he could say one word and Tom would know the rest. Most of us have had a friendship like that, and plenty of us have had to walk away from one. That ache, the guilt and the pride all at once, is what this film is about.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E02
P1 Entertainment

Season 5 · Episode 1

Work In Progress

A story about the weight of being the first. Martine becomes the first woman at the wheel in the league, leading Brazil's brand-new crew through a debut season of setbacks and learning everything in full public view.

Notes from the director

Carrying People You'll Never Meet

Sixth place can mean more than a trophy when you're the first to get there.

Being the first at anything means carrying people you'll never meet. Martine said it herself on launch night: "I'm carrying a lot of people." Then, at the press conference, she was asked how she was feeling, and she gave us the title of this film: "Work in progress." What I wanted to capture was the noise around her. Everybody had an opinion about what her success or failure would mean, and she had to drive the boat through all of it. You hear her begging for one minute of privacy. Her friend Kahena tells her not to change now and say what others want to hear.

We were with Alan, the man who built this team, as he watched, living every metre out loud. Through him you feel how small the margins are and how big the hope is. We put two opinions side by side and left them there. Tom worries that if a woman fails, it sets the movement back. Hannah says women are always asked to be better just to prove they deserve to be there. Then the racing answers in its own way. A risky start goes wrong, Brazil are last, and Martine finds a puff of wind nobody else has and flies from last to sixth.

Sixth is not a fairytale, and that's exactly why it matters. Martine says you have to celebrate the small milestones. I want people to feel that pressure in their chest, the unfairness of being judged under a different light, and the joy of a small win that means far more than its number. The film ends at the league's first training camp for women, because her story was never only hers.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S05E01
P1 Entertainment

Racing on the Edge

Season 4

11 episodes

Season 4 · Episode 11

Season finale

Foiling Glory

A story about how far belief can carry you. A season after finishing last, Diego's young Spanish crew must get past France just to reach the final, then take on the giants of the sport, and go all the way.

Notes from the director

Last to First

Season 4 of Racing on the Edge reached a total audience of 6.3 million, 22% more than the season before (P1 audience figures).

A season after finishing last, Spain arrive at the final event with everything still to do. They have to beat France just to reach the Grand Final, and on the first day nothing works. Their starts fall apart, France dominate, and Lisa describes the pain of Spain spiralling. So they make a plan that isn't about sailing faster. It's about stopping France: let them go, then chase them and make their lives difficult. Joan calls it a masterclass. Quentin, of all people, says he'd have done exactly the same.

Then it all turns on one moment. Pushing to the limit, France hit the Danish boat, the rudder snaps, and their season is over. Quentin says they were better and they just gave it away. That scene stayed with us. When you watch the next season, you'll see it again at the exact moment it comes back to haunt him. Lisa says something I find very moving: that going through the journey he shared with us in Racing on the Edge has probably made him a stronger athlete. That's the kind of thing that makes this job worth it.

The Grand Final is pure drama. Spain shoot off from the hardest angle at the start and take the lead, and then something catches their rudder and they almost grind to a halt near the finish, with Tom closing second by second. They just hold on. Last to first. And the bit I'll always remember comes after. Tom, who has just lost, says his wife told him their boy is proud of him, and then he talks about Diego: humble, a leader, the kind of guy you want to get behind. Diego calls Tom his idol. And right at the very end, I get to ask Brazil's new driver if she's ready. That's how one season hands over to the next.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E11
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 3

Choices

A story about caring for the person behind the performer. Sensing struggles no one else can see, Bruno sends Quentin away for three weeks to reset, then faces more hard choices, including a signing that stirs controversy.

Notes from the director

Nobody Left Alone

I wrote this film three different ways before the racing began, because real life always writes the final draft.

Bruno says something in this film that I think every boss should hear. When someone is struggling, the answer is to make sure they're not left alone, to make them feel surrounded by people who care, like a second family. After Chicago and Los Angeles the French are at a low point, and Bruno says Quentin has been through a lot that nobody knows about. So he tells him to forget the meetings, forget SailGP, and go wherever he wants for three weeks. He even gives him his own boat.

Then comes my favourite bit. Quentin has to ring Bruno every day to report that the plumber has come, the electrician has come, everything works, until Bruno finally tells him he can leave the marina. It's funny and tender, and it says more about the two of them than any interview could. Meanwhile Bruno makes the call nobody likes: he takes a sailor from the Swiss, a team he calls friends. Tanguy is upset, Seb says the timing is the worst part, and the Swiss end up hiring François, the French sailor who has just lost his seat. We filmed both sides of that, and I wanted you to understand both.

Before Saint-Tropez I wrote this film three different ways, because the story depended on the result: a podium, a middle-of-the-table weekend, or a really bad one. That's how this series works. We plan, and then real life decides. In the end France find their starts again, race in Taranto after a broken part is glued and clamped against the clock, and finish fourth, just off the podium. Lisa says if you're happy with fourth, you won't win. And Quentin says the thing that matters most: this is a real team, they can have lows and nobody has doubts.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E03
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 10

F50 Beavers

A story about playing for a future that hangs by a thread. Phil's Canadian crew give everything for their home fans in Halifax, knowing that unless new backing is found, this could be the end of their team.

Notes from the director

Fun on the Chopping Block

53% of US Formula 1 fans say Netflix's Drive to Survive played a part in making them fans, and 30% call it a major reason (Morning Consult, 2022).

This is a film about people who might lose their jobs at the end of the season, and decide to have fun anyway. One team will be cut, and Canada is one of the three in the bucket. Phil says it plainly: their necks are on the chopping block. So what do they do at their first home event? They put their beaver mascot on the boat, untethered, and race control has to stop them. Phil insists he's the skipper and he decides what's safe. It still makes me laugh.

We followed Hubert and Hugo, the two guys who run the team's social media from the back of the container. They're very open about it: if the team wins, its value goes up and it's easier to sell. The sailors take care of the sailing, they say, and they take care of the internet. And then you see what's really at stake for them. Hugo says it's the best gig he's ever had, and he'd be devastated to lose it. Hubert says he'd do it for free, then quickly takes it back in case Russell is listening.

Halifax sells out in twelve minutes, faster than any SailGP event ever, and Phil says Canada made him its son, his second home. In the last race at home they fall apart and miss the final. "This is so painful." Then in New York the same race nearly goes wrong again, they save it and make the final, and suddenly groups of Canadian owners are interested. That's why I love this story. Sometimes playing for your future looks like a beaver on a boat, a lot of noise, and a home crowd that refuses to let you go.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E10
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 9

The Horizontal Team

A story about rivalries that turn personal. When Taylor is ripped from the cockpit as his boat capsizes, mockery from Canada sparks a bitter war of words with Phil, while Diego quietly brings in a coach and his crew win.

Notes from the director

No Rock Stars

A team where everyone has a voice multiplies everything it touches.

Hamish, Spain's new coach, tells us something in this film that I love, even though it's a little dig at us. Inside a team, he says, you don't want to create a rock star. He knows we do, it's part of our job. But he wants a team, an identity, a very horizontal environment where everyone has a voice. That's where the title comes from. And then you watch it work: Nicole spots the Danish boat making a bad tack, and Diego trusts her and crosses.

It's not easy, and we show that too. In the last race a call gets misheard, the board goes down at the wrong moment, they get a penalty, and it looks like they're out. Tony says he's going to have a heart attack. Then Canada finish last, Spain are in the final, and right there Diego and Florian change the word they use so it never happens again. It's a tiny moment, and it's exactly what good teams do. In the final they go all in at the start and beat the Kiwis on the last upwind.

Running against all that is the opposite kind of story. The American boat capsizes in practice, and Taylor is ripped out of the cockpit, through the wing and pulled under the water. He grabs his emergency air. Victor lands next to a crewmate who's screaming in pain and doesn't know if moving him will make it worse. Then Canada post memes about it, and the war of words gets personal: Phil calls Taylor an arrogant college kid who's no longer in college. Put the two stories side by side and you see the whole film. Diego says it best: doing it as a team multiplies everything. It's probably the best feeling you can get in sport.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E09
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 8

Sitting Still

A story about coming home a different person. Pete returns from the birth of his first child to race before his own people, where dolphins halt the racing and collisions batter the fleet, but his crew hold their nerve and win.

Notes from the director

Race Ready, Sitting Still

With a private man like Pete, I lean on Robert McKee: "True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure."

Pete is a very private person. He says it himself: Tom lives everything out in public, while he likes a life outside the sport, with time for his friends and family. This is his first event back after becoming a dad, at home, in front of a record crowd, and Tom says it's hard to get a read on him. That's the challenge of filming Pete. He doesn't give much away, so you have to let the situation reveal him.

And what a situation. On Saturday, with thousands of people in the grandstands and perfect wind, a dolphin stops everything. Alejandra, from the race management team, gave us the title: it's very tough when you're race ready and just sitting still. We had cameras with them through every call, every delay, every attempt to move the course, while the party carried on and the MC kept the crowd dancing. On location I wrote that I wanted to mix that pressure with the party, and that if we pulled it off it would be ultra big. I think we did. In the end, racing is called off for the day, because the dolphin comes first.

Sunday is carnage. Boats collide, Tom chooses to hit a mark rather than risk hurting someone, and with one race left the Kiwis are second to last, about to miss the final at home. Then Pete takes the other side of the course and goes from second to last to second in three legs, with what he calls the biggest cheer he's ever heard from a sailing crowd. They win the final. Blair talks about a much greater purpose, encouraging kids to follow their dreams. And quiet Pete finally says it: winning at home is one of the most special things in sport.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E08
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 7

Proving Ground

A story about life without a place to call your own. Nearly killed in a car crash as a teenager, Nathan now fills in wherever he's needed, and must earn a seat or plan a new life with his family.

Notes from the director

More to Life Than Winning

The people who nearly lost everything know best what's worth keeping.

Nathan is one of the best sailors of his generation, and for two seasons he hasn't had a team of his own. He fills in wherever someone is missing. He jokes about it, asking other drivers when they're having kids so he can come and drive. But he also tells us, honestly, that it's been a very hard couple of years, being in a supporting role in the prime of your career. And if nothing comes up for next season, he and his family have other plans.

In Sydney he finally gets a great boat, Pete's, while Pete is at home waiting for his first child. And in one race you see exactly who Nathan is. Everyone expects a left turn at the top of the course, the commentators included, and he turns right, finds the best breeze of the day, and goes from a couple of boat lengths ahead to 300 metres ahead. He tells us that at school he could smell the rain coming. They call him the wind whisperer, and in that moment you understand why.

Then he loses the final, too early at the start, and he admits the rust comes out when you haven't been doing this for two years. That's where we tell the story I think explains him. At 18, after twenty days of sailing in a row, he fell asleep at the wheel and crashed into a tree. His mum tells us they lost him during surgery and brought him back, and she didn't know if he'd walk again. The surgeon just smiled at his plans and told him it's good to have ambitious goals. So when Nathan says there's a lot more to life than racing and winning, you believe him. And then, of course, he's had another offer, and he can't tell anyone yet.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E07
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 6

Daring Champion

A story about growing older in a young person's game. Back from paternity leave, Tom finds he is now the oldest at the wheel, and his answer is to dare the next generation to come and take his place.

Notes from the director

Kicking the Hornet's Nest

The best way to grow old in a young person's game is to dare the young ones to beat you.

Tom comes back from paternity leave and finds out, during a photo call, that he's now the oldest driver in the fleet. Erik works out the ages out loud, and Tom calls them all little bastards. It's funny, but there's something real underneath. Two of the greats have just retired, and suddenly Tom is the one standing between one era and the next. So he throws down the gauntlet: he doesn't see a standout in the next generation. Away from the microphones he's even more honest. He hears a young driver say he's happy with a seventh, when he'd be fuming after a third.

What I love is how everyone answers him. Erik says it's easy for Tom to say with more than 500 days on the boat. Taylor says it's time for him to go, he's old. Then the young ones answer on the water. Diego wins three races in light wind, the top three in one race are all new teams, and Tom misses the final after being judged over the start line by ten centimetres, with all his own software saying he wasn't. Stevie asks whether he's kicked the hornet's nest. I think he has, and I think that's exactly what he wanted.

Because this is really a film about why you race. Lisa puts it perfectly: it's not that Tom thinks there's no competition. You race because you love the battle and coming out the other side. At the end he calls it a bit of karma, but he stands by his words. He likes these guys, he says, and he hopes it lights a fire under them, because he wants to face the best. To me, that's a champion getting older in the best possible way.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E06
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 5

Sands of Time

A story about knowing when it's time to step aside. As Pete and Blair's crew rise again after their wing collapses, a disqualification ends Ben's weekend, and he tells his team it is time to hand the wheel to the next generation.

Notes from the director

It Doesn't Always Go to Plan

Adam Curtis says what audiences really like is "a sense of letting something run", so when the wing came down, we let it run.

This film begins with something Ben almost never talks about. A very close friend of his died of cancer, and Ben came to the first day of racing in Chicago straight from the funeral. The memorial was during Los Angeles. He's not making excuses, he says. It's just that in those moments your friends and your family matter more than sport, and you have to get that balance right. For me that's the key to the whole episode. It's about a great champion asking himself how much more he can give.

Running alongside it is the Kiwis' story. In Saint-Tropez their wing comes down on top of the crew, and I asked our editors to let it run for a few seconds with no dialogue, completely bare, so you sit in that not knowing, like the people on shore did. Once we know everyone is safe, the music tells a different story: their boat, Amokura, is hurt. Blair says it himself at the end: when Amokura gets hurt, we get hurt. So when Russell later lets the teams choose to go back to the bigger wing, the same kind that collapsed, you can feel how much that decision costs them.

Ben, meanwhile, is sailing beautifully. He wins Saint-Tropez and Taranto, and in Dubai he's dominating, until a start goes wrong and he's disqualified. He misses the final. The Kiwis win it with the same kind of wing that fell on them, and Blair calls it the highlight of their whole time in SailGP. Then we're in the room when Ben tells his team he's stepping down, so the next generation can have their chance. Lisa says it would have been poetic to finish with a win. Ben puts it better: it's life. It doesn't always go to plan.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E05
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 4

Winning Culture

A story about letting go of something you built. The team Jimmy turned around is sold, and our cameras follow the talks that end his time in charge, while an injury to Hans rattles the crew and Taylor steps in.

Notes from the director

Handing Over What You Built

Letting go of something you built is a kind of grief, and Jimmy met it with a smile.

This film starts with the scariest radio call there is: man overboard. In Taranto, Hans goes over the side and is knocked unconscious, and his wife is there, waiting at HQ with no information. Cathy, who goes to sit with her, says the not knowing is the worst part. Thank God Hans is okay, and when Jimmy visits him in hospital, all he wants to talk about is the racing. Everything else in this film stands on that moment.

Then we go back in time. In Los Angeles, months earlier, we were filming the talks to sell the American team, and we couldn't show any of it yet. Here, finally, you see it: the new owners arriving for their meetings, the big ideas about putting a boat in Times Square, and Russell gently reminding them that teams at the back of the fleet don't tend to do well commercially. And you see what it means for Jimmy. He took this team from last place to the podium, and now he has to hand it over, while the man who will replace him races on his boat.

Then reality writes the ending. In his last race, with a smaller crew, Jimmy steers and flies the boat himself, and he wins. He dedicates it to Hans. Genny says you couldn't script this storyline if you tried, and she's right. I love what Jimmy says before the final: whatever happens, he'll come in with a smile, because so many people would kill to be in his position. And of course he can't leave without a joke. He'll drive Tom's boat in Dubai, but only if Tom names his son Jimmy.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E04
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 2

Los Gallos Take Flight

How losing teaches you what winning means. After finishing last, Diego's young Spanish crew scrape into the final by seconds and win for the first time, a victory made sweeter by everything that came before.

Notes from the director

What Losing Gives Back

You only understand a win once you've lived the losses that came before it.

Spain had finished the previous season last. So this is a film about what losing does to you, and what it gives back. Diego puts it simply: winning feels special because it's been very hard to lose. To me that's the whole story. You can't understand this win without everything that came before it.

Los Angeles was a brand-new, tiny racecourse, with the crowd closer to the boats than ever. Three teams arrived from the bottom of the table with everything to prove. It was Diego's first final as a driver, and he only got there by seconds, edging Canada out in the last race. Then, in the final, the wind almost disappears, and Diego is the one who finds the little bit of breeze that takes him away.

There was another story that weekend that we couldn't tell yet. Big changes were coming for the American team, and all we could do in this film was hint at them. The full story had to wait for a later episode. Making this series in real time means living with that. You film everything, you protect what you have to, and you trust that each story will find its moment. Spain's had arrived. Russell had always said it was never a matter of if they would break through, only when.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E02
P1 Entertainment

Season 4 · Episode 1

Day 1 Race 1

A story about the nerves of a first day. A brand-new German crew face their first race and ride every emotion, while Ben arrives late to the opener and Phil's Canadian team begin the season unsure of their future.

Notes from the director

Everyone Starts at Zero

Stacy Peralta says that, skating with his friends, "learning to fall, or fail, was our most important move, our most important trick."

Everybody remembers their first day at something. This film is about one: a brand-new German team's very first race. They had two days of testing to catch up on years of work the others already had, and then a storm on Lake Michigan wiped out a day of practice. So they line up for the first ten-boat start in the history of this league with almost no time in the boat. That's scary stuff, and I wanted you to feel it from the inside.

Before Chicago I sat down with the team and asked for the kind of access we'd had with Spain and France, following people away from the tech base, and I suggested the crew film their own journey to Chicago. Then Day 1 Race 1 became the spine of the film. They start fifth. They fight the very best. And then, with sixth place right there, they miss a gate. Joy and heartbreak in a few minutes. That's a first day.

Around them, other people carry their own uncertainty. Phil's Canadian crew don't know if their team will survive the season, because the owner has stopped funding it. Ben arrives only hours before racing and still sails brilliantly. What I love about a first day is that everyone is equal for a moment. All the points are back to zero, and you can feel the nerves, the hope, and how much people have put on the line just to be there.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S04E01
P1 Entertainment

Racing on the Edge

Season 3

10 episodes

Season 3 · Episode 1

Where the series began

New Team on the Dock

How one man's will to survive can become a whole team's spirit. Fred has come through heart surgery, a stroke and cancer, and the brand-new Canadian crew he backs carries his positive outlook into a triumphant debut.

Notes from the director

Permission to Smile

Life threw everything at Fred, and he answered with joy.

Some people get a second chance at life and decide to spend it on joy. Fred is one of them. He has come through heart surgery, a stroke and cancer, and he lives as if every day is a gift. Canada's new team is his way of spending that gift: building something that lasts, and inspiring a generation along the way. What I love is how that spirit spreads to the crew. Phil sails best when he's having the most fun. He dances with the locals, talks to the crowd at the team party, sings and cheers at the tech base on his birthday. On paper, Canada had the slowest car on the grid. Nobody told them.

The edit was a race of its own. Interviews first, then the actuality, and then the film grew six minutes a day: six on Wednesday, twelve on Thursday, eighteen on Friday, twenty-four by Monday, when the rough cut went off to SailGP. That's the deal with this series. A new episode before every Grand Prix. The film lives in the small stuff we caught along the way. Fred out on the water with his family, watching his team top the leaderboard after the first day. Fred at breakfast the next morning, watching the races again. Fred taking the Canadian flag off the pole to carry it out on race day. Little moments, but they're everything.

Canada finished third, in a final against two of the toughest crews in the fleet. For a team that was supposed to spend the year learning, that's an arrival. What I hope people feel watching it is the lightness. Sport is so often filmed as suffering, and this one gives you permission to smile. Fred and Phil remind you that joy is a choice, even after life has thrown everything at you. And if a team built on that can make the final at its very first event, maybe the rest of us can bring a little more of it to whatever we do on Monday.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E01
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 10

Season finale

Golden Gate 5

A story about the old guard refusing to make way for the new. Quentin and Ben fight for the last place in the final, Ben resorting to mind games, before three crews chase a million dollars to the very last gate.

Notes from the director

Racing Your Heroes

The Last Dance averaged 5.6 million viewers across its ten episodes, the most ever for an ESPN documentary (ESPN, 2020).

Sooner or later, you have to race your heroes. Quentin grew up watching Ben, and in San Francisco only one of them can reach the Grand Final. Quentin says it's the first time in his life he's felt this kind of confidence: if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter, because he'll have done it his own way. And Ben, with his back against the wall, does what the great ones do. He hunts Quentin down before the start has even begun and gets right inside his head. Tom calls it one of the most impressive things he's seen. It's ruthless, and it's beautiful to watch.

There's a tiny moment that always makes me smile. At the press conference, someone quotes our previous episode back at Ben, the bit where he called Quentin the most impressive sailor in the league, and Ben asks if Quentin paid him to say it. I love it when the film ends up inside the story. Then, while the boats are meant to be resting between races, the two of them are already fighting on the water, and Lisa is messaging the broadcast team: are you getting this? We were.

And then the final, which I still think is one of the best races we've ever had the luck to film. Tom leads, Pete reels him in, and right at the end Tom falls off the foils with a million dollars on the line. He describes the gap closing, thirty metres, ten, five, four, three, and then the number starts going up again. We let him count it down for you. Tom says he wishes he could freeze that moment forever. Bruno says the defeat is good for Quentin, because now he knows the level. The old guard holds on, for now.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E10
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 9

The Deal Maker

A story about measuring success beyond results. Ben nears the end of the season still chasing his first Grand Prix win of the year, yet behind closed doors he is leading a different race: the deals that will shape his team's future.

Notes from the director

Do You Dance?

Some of the hardest races are the ones nobody puts on a leaderboard.

Results are only one way of keeping score. Ben's team hadn't won a Grand Prix all season, but behind the scenes they were winning two other races, and that became the film. The first is money. Ben has to raise eight to ten million a season to fund his team, and he does it by selling a dream. The second race belongs to Hannah, who came back after having her daughter, Sienna, and is racing at the very top while feeding her baby right before going out on the water. Two people fighting for things nobody puts on a leaderboard.

Ben guards his world carefully, which makes it even better that he told us his most embarrassing story. He's at a big dinner, trying to grow a sponsorship, when the chairman looks at him and asks: Ben, do you dance? He's the world's worst dancer, he says, but there's a deal on the line, so he gets up. And then they don't get the deal. Embarrassment for nothing. It's hilarious, and it tells you more about the hustle behind the sport than any business explanation could. We put it next to the real thing: Dubai, with the sponsor he's chasing there in person, and Ben going from hero to zero in about ten seconds.

Then there's Hannah and Nick. Nick stepped back from his own job so she could keep racing and Sienna could be with her. When a crewmate goes overboard in Sydney, all he can think is: please not her. And Hannah says something every working parent will recognise. On the water she can finally let go of being a mum for a few hours, and the moment she's back she misses her baby terribly, which is mad, she says, because it's only five hours. I hope people see themselves in that. Success comes in more shapes than a trophy.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E09
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 8

Anatomy of Speed

A story about the obsession behind excellence. We're let inside the secretive world of Pete and Blair's crew as, having finally found their rhythm, they close ranks and chase every last fraction of speed.

Notes from the director

At the Mercy of the Sky

In Chip Heath's class at Stanford, 63% of students remembered the stories they heard and only 5% a single statistic (Made to Stick, 2007).

This one started with a quote. Pep Guardiola was once asked the secret of his success and he said, I don't know. When we asked Pete, his answer was much the same. I love that. The people who are best at something are often the worst placed to explain it, because they're too close to it. So the film became a puzzle. Do they train harder than everyone else? Take more risks? Or are they simply more gifted? We set out to find the distance Pete didn't have.

We found it in the people around them. Nathan put it beautifully: they sail with a higher bandwidth of information. They're comfortable right on the edge of the rules, and they keep reinventing themselves before anyone can catch up. Then real life took over, as it always does. Lightning in Singapore, just after a win. A cyclone tearing through New Zealand days before the race in Sydney, with the team not even sure they'd be able to fly out. Then a storm in Sydney that cut the event short. None of that was in the plan, and all of it ended up in the film.

That's what turned a film about speed into something more human. The team came to Sydney wanting to race for a country in pain, and the weather took even that away from them. I think that's what stays with you. We spend so much time admiring excellence from the outside, as if it were a formula. Up close it's people, working obsessively, and still at the mercy of the sky. I find that oddly moving. However good you get, life decides when you're allowed to show it.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E08
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 7

Team & Nation

How laughter keeps people sane under pressure. Tom's crew are the team everyone wants to beat, and as a fearsome new rival closes in, they reach for their antidote to the strain: Australian humour.

Notes from the director

The Only Way Is Down

Ask people for stories, never for theories: the truth is always in the anecdote.

Being the best is lonelier than it looks. When you win, it's business as usual. When you lose, it's a story. Tom wrote to me while we were preparing this episode, and one idea in that email changed the whole film: when you're on top, the only way is down. Everyone in the fleet wants to be the one who finally beats the Australians, and you can feel it on the start line. So the real question became how you carry that, year after year, without cracking.

Their answer is laughter. We asked everyone on the team the same question: when have you laughed the most together? No theory, just stories. What came back was gold. A swear jar brought in to keep Tom's temper in check, with Tom handing over a hundred and thirty dollars and arguing about the price. Jason explaining that their love language is insulting each other, then stopping to ask if he's allowed to swear. It's funny, but it's also how they survive. We didn't hide the other side either. Tom's fury on the radio after a clash with the Kiwis is in there too, bleeps and all.

The moment I love most comes in Singapore. Two of their regulars are missing, and Tom tells Tash, who has just turned twenty-two, that she'll be steering through the manoeuvres with no practice at all. She just says, let me have a go. Afterwards she's overwhelmed, and Liv gives her a cuddle and tells her she's proud of her. That's the team in one image: tough people who are still allowed to be soft with each other. I hope people feel they've been let in on the joke, and come away wanting a crew like that around them.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E07
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 6

Rebuilding Champions

A story about rebuilding yourself after a defeat that still hurts. Quentin joins a new team carrying the weight of a painful loss, and must fight his own mind as hard as the punishing conditions on board.

Notes from the director

Strong at the Broken Places

Errol Morris taught me that when someone looks you in the eye, "it is a moment of drama."

Quentin arrived in this league a few months after the biggest disappointment of his life, a result nowhere near what he and Manon had worked years for. Bruno says he came back almost totally destroyed. Quentin is more precise about it, and braver. Physically, he says, he was probably at the level. Mentally, probably not. What interests me is what happens after a blow like that. We put a line from Hemingway on screen because it says it better than we ever could: the world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken places.

To tell it, we asked people from all over the league about their own worst defeats, the days a dream fell apart. Tom, Saskia, and Lisa, who ends up getting emotional on camera and admits she doesn't really talk about it. We left the camera check and the clap in at the start of one of those interviews, so you feel it's a real room and a real person about to say something hard. There's an animated sequence too, days and days of work, because some moments in a life you simply don't have pictures of. And there's Thomas, who works with Quentin on his mind, and tells him: if you fall, I'll fall with you.

Then Cádiz, one year after his debut. Light wind, only four of them on board, Quentin doing two jobs at once with almost no experience, and France win for the first time. Afterwards he thanks his team for giving him the chance to recover. When we sent the first cut to the French team, Bruno wrote back that it was very emotional for them, and that meant a lot to us. I hope it does the same for anyone who's ever been flattened by a result. Thomas puts it best: this is more of a human adventure than a quest for a result.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E06
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 5

Red Wall

A story about losing faith in yourself. After a collision shatters his confidence, young Jordi feels his world crumbling, and must face 70,000 home fans in Cádiz still unsure he is the right person to lead.

Notes from the director

The Seventh Crew Member

The hardest crew to lead is the one made of your friends.

Jordi's story starts with a dream. Not long before, he says, he was running after these same sailors asking for photos, and suddenly he's racing them. Then one bad moment changes everything. A collision, then another one, and the confidence that got him there starts to leak away. By the time we reach Copenhagen, it's being suggested in public that his friend Diego should take the wheel instead. Imagine hearing that about yourself, in front of everyone, while you're still working out who you are as a leader.

That's really what the film is about: how you lead your friends. The Spanish crew grew up together, and somebody in the film asks the question at the heart of it: how do you create a leader in an environment of friends? After Copenhagen they sit down and ask themselves whether to change the person at the wheel, and the answer is no. Loyalty is a decision too. We also wanted Cádiz to feel like a character. Seventy thousand people on the waterfront. A voice on the speakers telling them that today they'll be the seventh member of the crew. We even gave one of the fans, Jose, a voice in the film. You can't plan moments like that. You just have to be ready when they happen.

What breaks your heart is how close it gets. The jib breaks minutes before a start and they still fight their way up the fleet, and on the last day they're in a qualifying place until the wind simply dies on them, in front of all those people. Everyone knows the feeling of having something at your fingertips and watching it slip away. I hope people come away feeling for Jordi, and for a group of friends learning, very publicly, what leadership costs.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E05
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 4

Rise of the Viking

A story about fighting to belong. Written off by outsiders, the Danish team rebuild with newcomers who battle one another for a place on board, and Nicolai must channel that hunger with a home crowd watching.

Notes from the director

No One Feels Safe

Belonging is never given; you fight for it, sometimes against the people you love.

What do you do when the people around you are also your competition? Nicolai decided his team had become too comfortable, so he made sure nobody was. More sailors than seats, everyone fighting for a place. He's honest about why: if they were going to win, no one could feel safe in their position. It's a brave idea and a brutal one, because the fight isn't between strangers. Rasmus says he gave Nicolai his first opportunity in sailing. Now he has to fight a younger man, CP, for his own seat on Nicolai's boat.

That's a delicate thing to film. You're asking people to be honest about a rivalry that lives inside a friendship, and they were, which I'm very grateful for. We followed it across four events, and the racing kept twisting the knife. Knocked out of their first final by four points in Bermuda. Small, silly mistakes in Chicago. Then Plymouth, where a penalty on another boat in the last moments sends them into a final for the first time, after more than two years of work. We even put up a title card that just says: The final? Maybe. I still love that card, because it's exactly how it felt.

Then Copenhagen. A home final, and Nicolai gambles, turning away from everyone to find his own wind, and for a moment Denmark is leading in front of their own city. I won't spoil what happens next. What I hope people take from it is that belonging is never given. You fight for it, sometimes against people you love, and the fight can make everyone better if someone holds it all together. Watching a team nobody believed in become a team nobody wants to face is a great feeling. It's the underdog story, with the bruises left in.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E04
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 3

Cracking the Code

A story about the humility of starting over. Pete and Blair's crew keep falling short, until a new coach changes the way they talk to one another and their first win finally arrives.

Notes from the director

Beginners Again

Stacy Peralta taught me to show the struggle behind the legend: of Tony Hawk, he said, "I wanted to show kids that Tony struggled."

It takes a lot of humility to become a beginner again, especially when you're used to winning everything. That's where Pete and Blair were. They arrived in a league where every boat is identical, so the only difference is the people, and for a whole season it simply didn't click. Sixth in their very first race. Second to last at the halfway point. Fifth, fourth, seventh, fifth, fifth. For people like them, that's a quiet kind of torture.

We built the film as a flashback. It opens in Chicago in forty-degree heat, with the crew finally close to the front, then goes back to their first season to sit with every disappointment before returning to the present. Structure matters so much in a film like this, because a first win only means something if you've felt the year before it. The other big character is Ray, the coach they brought in after a season without one. What changed wasn't the boat. It was the way they talked to each other, clearer and quicker. There's a lovely moment in Plymouth too, where the crew spend time with local kids by the river, and you see where all this pressure is meant to lead.

When the first win finally comes in Plymouth, against Denmark and Australia, it feels earned in a way a quick win never could. I think that's what people recognise. Most of us know what it's like to be good at something and then land somewhere new where none of it seems to count. You swallow your pride, you ask for help, you learn to listen. Watching two people at the very top of their game do exactly that is oddly comforting. Nobody gets to skip the beginner part. Not even them.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E03
P1 Entertainment

Season 3 · Episode 2

Fresh Water

What it feels like to fail in front of the people you most want to make proud. Jimmy brings his team home to Chicago, finishes near last before huge crowds, and has nowhere to hide from the self-doubt that follows.

Notes from the director

The Hardest Place to Lose

This film taught me to cut the line that tells you what to feel, and let the picture do it.

Coming home is supposed to be the easy part. Your people are there, the crowd is on your side, and you've told yourself this is where it all turns around. Chicago was meant to be that weekend for Jimmy. Instead the boat was slow and nervous, the results kept going the wrong way, and a huge home crowd was watching every bit of it. Hans, still learning his job on the boat, was doing it in front of all of them. I don't think there's anything lonelier than losing at home. You can't disappear into the crowd, because the crowd came for you.

We tried to look past the scoreboard. While the results fell apart, the team stopped at one point to watch the youngsters race. Those kids look at the big boats like they've come from another planet, and that became the heart of the film. The future, sitting right there on the shore. Jimmy's son was there too. One of my notes in the edit was to take out a mention of Father's Day. I like it when the pictures are left to do that kind of work on their own. The ending we built is simple: Jimmy's son, a visit to the base, and then the last word goes to Jimmy.

It's an uncomfortable film, and I think it should be. We all know what it feels like to let down the people who believe in us, and to lie awake afterwards going over every decision. Watching someone as experienced as Jimmy go through that in public makes it feel a little less shameful when it happens to the rest of us. And then there are those kids on the shore, still dreaming. Failure and hope in the same frame. To me, that's what home really is.

Racing On The Edge · SailGP · S03E02
P1 Entertainment

Your story, next.

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Extraordinary lives.Every story, human.

Letting Go

We Crash, We Fly

Empathy (billed to the BBC as "Winning Cultures")

The Space Between People

The Power of Opportunity

The Door Is Real

This Is Us

A Love Letter, Delayed

The Art of Risk

Living With Risk

Flight at Breaking Point

Learning to Fly

Racing for Glory

Don't Be Like Me

Breaking Point: The Sassnitz Miracle

Going Back Out

The Last Seat

Four Teams, Three Seats

Waiting for Wind

When Nothing Happens

Penalty Point

Opening the Next Box

Redemption on the Solent

The Other Side of the Fence

Helmswoman's Ascent to First Fleet Race Glory

Turning Left When Others Turn Right

The Crew From The Lake

Where's the Fire?

Start Again

Not a Reality Show

Fear of Failure

Two Kinds of Fuel

Quentin's Gold

Racing the Ghost

Telepathic Combos

Fifteen Years Side by Side

Work In Progress

Carrying People You'll Never Meet

Foiling Glory

Last to First

Choices

Nobody Left Alone

F50 Beavers

Fun on the Chopping Block

The Horizontal Team

No Rock Stars

Sitting Still

Race Ready, Sitting Still

Proving Ground

More to Life Than Winning

Daring Champion

Kicking the Hornet's Nest

Sands of Time

It Doesn't Always Go to Plan

Winning Culture

Handing Over What You Built

Los Gallos Take Flight

What Losing Gives Back

Day 1 Race 1

Everyone Starts at Zero

New Team on the Dock

Permission to Smile

Golden Gate 5

Racing Your Heroes

The Deal Maker

Do You Dance?

Anatomy of Speed

At the Mercy of the Sky

Team & Nation

The Only Way Is Down

Rebuilding Champions

Strong at the Broken Places

Red Wall

The Seventh Crew Member

Rise of the Viking

No One Feels Safe

Cracking the Code

Beginners Again

Fresh Water

Extraordinary lives.
Every story, human.

Who do you want
the world to know?