Emotions ran high when American Magic Quantum Racing docked back at the Yacht Club Costa Smeralda having just won the 2025 52 Super Series title.
After 18 years of competing, first in the Med Cup and then starting as a co-founder of the 52 Super Series, the final event of the season was also the final event for the DeVos family’s Quantum team. Quantum have consistently set the performance standard for the circuit – and, whether winning the season or not, they have been a big driver for the level getting higher every year. Doug DeVos was fundamental to the founding of the circuit and has been a cornerstone to its continued success.
DeVos is keen now to spend more time at home with his family, not least to spend time with his grandchildren, encouraging and supporting them in their own sporting endeavours. Although he will not be racing on the 52 Super Series in the near future, he remains the circuit’s majority shareholder and has pledged his ongoing support and active participation in the management of its future.
As he enthused, ‘Every time one door closes another one opens. We have to attract people to our sport, we have to find new and better ways to tell our story. This circuit really helps develop the sport. The Super Series is such a great platform and we have to keep dreaming, keep working, how do we make it better? We have to find new and better ways to tell our story and to engage more people and keep the sport of sailing expanding further.’
Their record is unmatched. 2025 is their seventh 52 Super Series season title and in Cascais they won the TP52 World Championship for the eighth time. Since the circuit was launched in 2012 they have won the titles in 2013, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2022, 2024 and 2025. They were also world champions in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2014, 2016, 2018, 2022, 2025. Quantum also won the TP52 Royal Cup in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2022, 2025.
Since the start of the 52 Super Series circuit they notched up 28 event wins and finished on the podium 52 times. They are the only team to have competed at all 66 regattas sailed so far. In 2025 they won seven races from 40 starts – the joint highest number with Platoon Aviation – and won six races in 2024 from 41 starts.
Thanks are due to so many team members but perhaps most of all to their indefatigable team manager Ed Reynolds, the ‘adult supervision’ as he disarmingly describes himself. But he has been the oil that has kept the machine rolling along so smoothly.
Of course the whole team will be missed, but they leave at the top of their game with the 52 Super Series in excellent health. Negotiations are at an advanced stage for an experienced, committed owner to buy their continually optimised Botín boat and programme; if that comes to the expected conclusion then many of the current Quantum team are likely to continue in their roles.
In Porto Cervo it was also a fond farewell – for the moment – to Hasso and Tina Plattner’s Phoenix team which has been campaigning for eight years. Tina is successfully pursuing her equestrian goals and Hasso – co-founder of software giant SAP – is becoming less keen on travelling as much as he did. Of her legendary father Tina said at the end-of-season bash, ‘his only regret is that we did not start on the 52 Super Series sooner than we did’.
For all that, the expectation is to have an average of 13 boats on the startline next year and as many as 15 at the season’s finale in Valencia. Plus there are several keen prospective new owners in the wings looking for good, competitive boats.
Young blood
In Porto Cervo, learning first-hand what it is really all about, was new young Swedish owner Joakim Sundberg along with Marcus Hoglander and Anders Lewander – two key members of his Trinity Racing Team. Sundberg is another successful tech businessman who has worked all his life in cyber security as co-founder of the Swedish company Baffin Bay Networks – itself recently acquired by Mastercard. Now Sundberg is turning some of that competitive focus towards the water, committing his next five years to getting as high up the Super Series fleet as possible. Sundberg is something of a newcomer to sailing but he is impassioned and determined and he is going in with his eyes fully open.
Last year his nascent team bought a Melges IC37 to help find their feet. Sundberg explains, ‘After sailing on the IC37 a little and feeling the power and loving the layout of the boat, it was definitely the perfect first boat for us. A good choice. However, before long we started to look at a bigger boat and the TP52 was one option we considered. As well as the TP52 being a great boat, I was drawn to this circuit because it is well-organised, races in attractive locations and with a great fleet of sailors and owners who are fiercely committed to doing well. This made us feel this is our best next step.’
His sailing background has been mainly family cruising: ‘I have minimal racing history. I have only been doing this for a few years, starting on a VX One Design which was super fun, very fast, and it was big enough for me and my kids to start in together. I will keep racing with them. But I feel like now is the time for me to step up and so on to something new.’
Sundberg’s new TP52 is currently in build in Valencia. ‘We looked around at different options to buy a used boat but the market is tiny, too many people looking and too few boats. So we made the decision in May to build new for 2026. What we are building has been tailored for our team, based on the years of experience of the designers, builder and other sailors. I think we will get a boat that will fit our crew. It will obviously take time to optimise it for what we want, but building a new boat was the right thing to do.’
Sundberg is building at King Marine to a Botín design close to the Alegre/Platoon Aviation design. It is being project-managed by Micky Costa and most likely they will run with North Sails. Sundberg wants a team that is as Swedish as possible.
‘We reckon that in the beginning we need experience from good sailors who are already racing in this fleet. But the long term ambition is to build a wider Swedish platform to give young Swedes from big clubs like the KSS and GSS enough knowledge and experience to eventually get onto this circuit. We aim to take on kids of around 16-17 years old and provide a platform on which they will train inshore and offshore with the top step being the 52 Super Series.’
Marcus Hoglander has raced previous Swedish TP52 campaigns with Niklas Zennström and then Filip Engelbert and is a well-known face on the circuit. Lewander – now with North Sails Sweden – skippered Ericsson 3 on the 2008-2009 Volvo Ocean Race; he says that around two-thirds of their new TP52 team is already recruited.
A second Brazilian team is also joining the circuit. Mauro Dottori and Fabio Cotrim will campaign Phoenix with an experienced group, good friends and counterparts of the successful Crioula Team which has been their inspiration. The Caballo Loco Sailing Team has Finn and Star ace Jorge Zarif as tactician with Andre Mirsky as strategist. They will also have several non-pro sailors onboard, including navigator Luciano Secchin who on his ‘days off’ works as a ship pilot on the Amazon… Most of this team are from São Paolo.
They are stepping up from their previous ‘mini’ Phoenix Botín 44-footer, so were very chuffed to be able to buy the ‘real’ Phoenix TP52! Since 2023 they have chartered other TP52s to race in the Med, principally at Copa del Rey.
Winning notes
Taking four programmes under his wing in 2025, American Magic, Gladiator, Vayu and Alpha+, longtime Quantum coach James Lyne was constantly running data day in day out throughout the season. And as usual there were some interesting conclusions. He notes, ‘2025 was always going to be a fun season, plenty of boats changed foil/bulb packages, plus the three new boats from 2024 were going to become more refined and start going faster.
‘Meanwhile, all the major sailmakers in the class had been beavering away making refinements on the aero side. Season opener St Tropez was a little too light to draw conclusions, but Baiona had a great range of conditions that began to show us how the tea leaves were going to spread out for the year.
‘Quantum Racing were on our 2024 platform configuration so we already had a great year of solid data vs the fleet to know what our strengths and weaknesses were going to be with that set-up. Our gains were going to be evolutions in rig set-up, plus design and structure of some of the key sails for the season. We had a big focus on the 6-12 knots wind range, so it was good to see a small edge develop upwind in that band.
‘Over the winter many of the boats had also changed to big fat chord keels – which delivered some consistent benefits upwind and holding a lane. But there is still no such thing as a free lunch and, sure enough, the price for those gains was some downwind deficit for the boats that moved that way. Cascais this year was as breezy and wavy as ever and the top two boats there were the two that can run the highest forestay loads in the fleet. A little correlation to the causation!!!
‘Across the fleet we had a group of all-round boats – Quantum Racing, Sled, Paprec, Gladiator, Alpha+, Vayu and Alkedo – that did especially well in the 6-14 knots TWS range upwind. Then the new boats – Alegre, Platoon and at times Provezza – which were very fast in flat water and gusty up-range offshore conditions where they could sail fast numbers to the next shift. The flatter sea state was also better for these flatter hulls, with less rocker than predecessor designs.
‘And then of course Sled once again found an extra gear upwind in Porto Cervo, in 16 knots+ wind speed, with her raked rig and structured-luff flat camber, draft forward mainsail with its straight exits. Something for everyone to look at for next year.
‘Now it’s back down the boat speed mine for the winter… so I’m looking forward to seeing what people come up with for 2026.’
