New America’s Cup rules committee announced

The rules committee for the 37th America’s Cup has been announced, with a trio of members, Mark Ellis, Marc Wintermantel and Stan Honey. The three members will be in charge of maintaining the rules and regulations in relation to all AC37 race yachts.

According to the protocol of the 37th America’s Cup, the role of the rules committee will be exclusively responsible for the interpretation of the AC75 and AC40 class rules and their rulings are final. The rules committee is also responsible for the determination of whether or not any yacht constitutes a surrogate yacht, based on information provided by the measurement committee. The committee will also resolve any other matter for which it is given jurisdiction under the protocol and/or the class rules.

UK-based Mark Ellis recently retired from F1 following a lifelong career in motorsport, culminating in a decade of world championships with Red Bull and latterly as performance director at MercedesF1, overseeing the performance programmes, development of simulation technologies, control systems and vehicle dynamics.

Since retiring from F1, Mark has acted as a consultant for a diverse array of industries such as F1, hyper-car constructors and Olympic track cycling. 

Marc Wintermantel, based in Switzerland, holds a Masters and PhD degree in quantum electronics and computational physics, and is currently working as a corporate fellow at ANSYS, a market leader for CAE/multiphysics simulation software. He is an expert in structural engineering with a focus on numerical composite material analysis. Wintermantel is also co-founder of the company EVEN which established itself prior to the acquisition through ANSYS as a software developer and engineering service provider in F1, MotoGP and America’s Cup racing. While working within EVEN, Wintermantel served as structural engineer for United Internet Team Germany during the 32nd America’s Cup and later became design coordinator for the team. 

USA-based Stan Honey was a member of the 36th America’s Cup rules committee. As professional sailing navigator, he has won the Volvo Ocean Race, set the Jules Verne record for the fastest non-stop circumnavigation of the world, and set multiple 24-hour, trans-Atlantic, trans-Pacific, Sydney-Hobart, and Newport-Bermuda sailing records. In 2010, Honey was awarded the US Sailing Yachtsman of the Year Award and was nominated to the National Sailing Hall of Fame in 2012.

Honey is a Yale/Stanford electrical engineer, three-time Emmy winner for technical innovations in sports TV, and an inventor on 30 patents in navigation and graphics. Honey was nominated to the Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame in 2017 and the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2018. In earlier navigation-related work, Honey co-founded ETAK in 1983. The company pioneered vehicle navigation systems with digital map databases, heading-up map display, and map-matching navigation.