Land Rover BAR Takes Us Inside The America’s Cup With This 360 VR Video

Photos by Atif Kazmi for Por Homme

Earlier this month, we took a trip to Bermuda with Land Rover BAR as the team competed for the America’s Cup. Yacht racing is truly a remarkable sport and getting the opportunity to learn more about the races, its participants, and all the tech that’s now leveraged makes the experience that much more enjoyable. And for all the high adrenaline performance we see displayed by these boats and their teams, many have no idea how much research and development goes into competing in and hopefully winning a race. In comes a partner like Land Rover that’s dedicated a ton of resources to drive innovation and success.

They’ve been able to come in to optimize the aerodynamics of the windsails to increase performance while also working closely with everyone on the team to create components custom fit for them. With Ben Ainslie at the helm, Land Rover was able to craft a custom steering wheel that’s made for him and in a world where you can win or lose by just seconds, teams will take any edge possible. And where Land Rover logs thousands of data points in their self-learning car features, they’re able to bring that machine learning and AI to the world’s fastest match racing catamaran. Every test sail collects 189 million data points and when analyzed at scale in ways Land Rover does every single day, the impact is tremendous.

And like F1 racing needs the right driver and the right team and cars, the same applies to yacht racing. BAR itself is a 140-person company that has a former F1 boss leading the charge as CEO and the the facilities and capabilities to win. There are Olympic gold medalists competing for the America’s Cup on six-man teams that are all relying on each other to get the job done.

So beyond the tech and all the greatness that makes these boats sail and fly, there are people. Land Rover BAR has actually dropped this 360 VR video to let you get up close and personal, from training and testing to racing. Check it out (preferably in full screen with a headset on) up top.

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Por Homme is a contemporary lifestyle magazine dedicated to providing readers with the latest news around automotive, fashion, travel, tech and more.