The 34th America’s Cup finals are set to start on Sept. 7. The defending champions, Oracle Team USA (lead by Oracle founder Larry Ellison), will take on Emirates Team New Zealand. These teams have spent more than $100 million each, building the fastest sailboats the race has ever seen, the AC72.

On May 9, one of the boats tipped over while turning. The boat, at 72 feet, came towering down towards the water, trapping Andrew Simpson of Sweden’s Artemis Racing underneath, taking his life.

This accident has been haunting the race, and has rehashed the question, is the AC72 (the official yacht class for the race) too fast to be safe?

The goal was to make and design an exciting boat — something that looks like a fast and amazing machine

Said Joseph Ozanne, who helped design the AC72 for Oracle. The average speed for these insane boats is 46 mph.

The director of performance for Oracle Ian Burns described the speed of the AC72 boats:

Imagine taking your Camaro, and taking the 300-horsepower motor out and putting a 3,000-horsepower motor in the same car.

Amongst all the danger and criticism surrounding the AC72 this year, the race is seeing more media attention than before. NBC will broadcast the finals, making it the first US network to broadcast the race in 20 years.

Julian Guthrie, author of The Billionaire and the Mechanic said that obviously no one wants to see a tragedy, but added:

People going back to the Romans, they’re bloodthirsty. Why do you watch football? You want to see the pileups. You want to see these crashes

As soon as this race is over, billionaires will start to prepare for next year’s race, with their sights set on faster boats.

Check out this vid from May, to see how crazy it is:

[Source: The Verge]