It's official: since the beginning of 2026, the Allagrande Mapei Racing team is fully operational and autonomous. To refresh your memory: in 2025, the team was still very small and was incubated within Thomas Ruyant's team, TR Racing. This collaboration was invaluable: it allowed those who were already part of the team to become familiar with the IMOCA class, while Ambrogio discovered and learned to master his new boat.

Thanks to this experience, we grew and understood how to structure the work. Now, we turn a new page: new offices, new team members, and above all, a real desire to shape the project according to our vision. To do this, we even started by treating ourselves to a new sofa.

We continue to share the daily life of the team through our web series, filmed in the heart of the shipyard. Anne Beaugé, the videographer, spends a lot of time with us to capture the best moments, technical discussions, doubts, progress, and all the life that revolves around the boat. We do our best to show you everything that makes up the project, unfiltered.

A new addition to the team, our new van arrived in Lorient for Christmas. A Fiat Ducato, equipped with Pirelli tires — a nod to Ambrogio's old sponsor.

This vehicle is provided to us by Lorenzihub, a dealership that has been supporting Ambrogio since his beginnings. A loyal partner who will continue this adventure with us until the Vendée Globe. For now, the van is all white, but a small decoration worthy of its name will soon be added.

After the holidays and culinary excesses, finally back to daily life, we told ourselves: "Now we'll go on a diet!" Impossible, because what did we find in the office upon our return? Panettone.

Mapei kindly sent us three large ones, and the team certainly didn't hold back. The beginning of the year started with guilt-free feasting and a few suspicious crumbs on the boat's plans.

Undoubtedly one of the most impressive parts of the shipyard. The ultimate goal was to have new, larger foils. To install them, it was necessary to move the foil entrance in the boat to a lower area of the hull: we therefore had to move the foil trunks, an extremely complex area of the boat, because it supports very significant loads.

Two holes were cut in the deck to remove the old trunks and prepare them for the future position. We also started preparing the new area that will house them and began closing the old foil exits. An extraordinary project for our first major shipyard, which should greatly optimize our boat.

One of the big goals for winter is the hunt for kilograms. We carried out a complete inventory of the boat and removed numerous components, weighing them one by one. Two options: either rebuild them in a lighter version, or decide that the piece will no longer be needed. This is particularly the case for the watch seat, which we chose to remove: the team made the conscious choice to prioritize performance.

The boat's decoration is now approved... but you'll have to be patient before discovering it. What we can already say is that it should be very beautiful. The paints have been ordered, and the sanding of the old paint has begun. A total of 200 hours of work are planned just to remove the current paint. This entire part is entrusted to the Nautymor shipyard of Davy Beaudart, experts in this type of intervention.

This month we had a completely new experience: the production of a film for the Sailorz Film Festival, the fifth edition of Tip & Shaft's nautical film festival. With Teorema (Tommaso Romanelli) as producer and Nicola Pietromarchi as director, we filmed Night Shift, a very intimate and conceptual film about the relationship between Ambrogio and his boat.

Filming lasted a week, in early January, often at night, in the hangar, once everyone had left. Smoke, play of light, an almost unreal atmosphere. It was the first time we worked with film professionals, and the experience was unique and engaging.

First screening: February 9 at the Grand Rex, in Paris. The film will then travel through 47 dates in France, Switzerland, and Belgium. We are also looking for ways to distribute it in Italy.