Ian Williams and Team GAC Pindar will enter next week’s Argo Group Gold Cup with their bid for an unprecedented sixth world match racing title on track.

The defending world champions are top of the World Match Racing Tour leaderboard and need to reach the finals in order to improve their near perfect scoreline to count towards the overall championship.

“We have three good results posted already [2,2,3] so for us the result [Gold Cup] is not critical to the World Match Racing Tour,” Williams, the 2006 Gold Cup winner, said.

“We can still improve our score, so our goal will be to make it to the final.”

Williams and Team GAC Pindar are the top-ranked team in group one for the qualifying stage which also consists of Johnie Berntsson and Stena Sailing, the defending Gold Cup champions, Eric Monnin and Team Sailbox, last year’s runners-up, Dean Barker and SoftBank Team Japan, the 35th America’s Cup challenger, and local hopeful Blythe Walker and Team RenRe.

Bjorn Hansen and Nautiska Racing are the top-ranked team in group two and are second on the World Match Racing Tour leaderboard, five points adrift of Williams and needing to finish in the top three if they are to build on their score.

“The Gold Cup is a very prestigious event so always attracts a very strong field,” Williams, who has retained the same crew from last year, said. “This year is no different and Team GAC Pindar are looking forward to the challenge.”

This year’s Gold Cup could be the last featuring the International One Design sloop as WMRT officials are keen to extend use of the high-performance M32 catamaran more widely across the series for next year’s competition.

Williams has already spent time sailing the M32 having competed on this year’s M32 Scandinavia Series in order to gain more competitive experience of multihull racing ahead of the next year’s new-look World Match Racing Tour.

“The M32 is of course very different to the IOD,” Williams said. “They are about 1/6 of the weight and much more powerful. Acceleration and deceleration are much more extreme, that makes for a very different style of sailing.

“I have enjoyed the challenge of sailing the IODs over the years, but we are always ready to adapt as necessary. Our job is to sail whatever boat is provided to us.”

The Gold Cup will be held from October 6 to 11 in Hamilton Harbour.