Porsche Pushes Big Wave Surfboard Performance To The Limits At Nazare
The Nazare Big Wave Challenge has been given the green light to run on Monday, January 22. Among the big-wave surfers in the draw is world record holder Sebastian Steudtner. In October of 2020 the German surfer broke the world record for biggest wave ever ridden with a monstrous 86-footer at Nazare in Portugal. In an effort to ride the mythic 100-foot wave, Steudtner and car maker Porsche, along German autoparts specialist Schaeffler, are collaborating on the development of a faster surfboard that will hopefully allow Steudtner to break his own record.
"With the world record wave I realized I've reached a limit for how fast my board can go," Steudtner explained to French news agency AFP.
5 Teams To Watch At The Nazare Big Wave Challenge
“Together with Porsche, we asked ourselves how we could make the board faster and more stable,” he continued. “Speed is so important to us because the bigger the wave, the more speed I have to have to get away from it. The power of the wave is an absolute force, like having several buildings pushing you.”
“Through changes to the board and altering Sebastian’s stance, we were able to reduce air resistance by 20 percent,” Markus Schmelz, a project manager at Porsche, told AFP.
The board they’ve engineered has reportedly “made the board faster and more stable at high speeds.” Colored yellow and black, the new design has been completed and now it’s just a matter of time for a truly giant day, presumably at Nazare, for Steudtner to bust it out and see what happens.
Nazare Big Wave Challenge Gets Green Light To Run In Potential 50-Foot Surf
With more than 25 years of writing about surfing, the ocean and action sports, Jake Howard continues to share stories, profiles and issues that shape the surfing world. One of the premier subject-matter experts in the field today, he's savvy in the ways of print, digital and social media, his breadth of work is expansive. Getting his start writing Surfline surf reports and recording the phone reports for 976-SURF in the late '90s, Jake served as the managing editor for Surfer Magazine in the early 2000s before moving on to launch RedBullSurfing.com and cover surfing for ESPN and the X Games. Over the years, Jake has also enjoyed time behind the edit desk at The Surfer's Journal, as well as the World Surf League, where he worked as the Senior Editor for a number of years. Beyond producing editorial content, Jake has served as a digital marketer and copywriter for iconic surf brands such as Quiksilver, Roxy and Rip Curl. Writing thousands of pages of copy for Surfline, he has deep SEO experience as well. The surf columnist for the San Clemente Times, Jake continues to dedicate himself to the culture and history of the sport through his involvement with the Surfing Heritage and Culture Center in San Clemente.