A decision has been reached that there will be no sail-off, as it was determined that this was not an unbreakable countback. Ainslie's team pointed out that they had accumulated more points, hence they would get in first by countback. Thus Ainslie and Minoprio will go through to the quarter finals, Ian Williams is out. We will not know pairings until Saturday morning.
There was joint appeal by Ben Ainslie (GBR) TEAMORIGIN and Ian Williams (GBR) Team GAC Pindar sponsored by Argo Group against the race committee’s decision to run a sail off between the two Brits and Adam Minoprio (NZL) ETNZ/BlackMatch Racing to decide the last two quarter-finalists. The initial action had the three skipper names put into a hat, with the first and second draws (A and B) sailing against each other, the winner advancing, the loser sailing against choice C.
In the draw, A and B were drawn as Minoprio and Ainslie, C as Williams. Williams protested, based on points in the repechage. He claimed that he should be in the first match, not second. However, according to rule in the Sailing Instructions C11.1a the repechage is part of the qualifying series, hence a countback had to take into account ALL flights to date, not just the repechage.
Taking that into account, it was shown the Ainslie would have the most points, Minoprio second, and Ian Williams third, hence Williams out of the Quarter Finals.