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The New Zealand team’s great boat speed continues to amaze their opponents, but skipper Peter Burling has promised that Te Rehutai and his team expect much more.
The Kiwis scored two predictable victories over the UK’s INEOS team on Friday to join American Magic at the top of the rankings in the America’s Cup world series and the Christmas Cup regatta in Auckland on Friday.
The first was a routine with a nice win in the starting area, although there were a couple of mishaps further up the field, nearly cutting off a marker buoy during one shift and then leaping out of the water in a crazy jibe into a headwind. .
Fiona Goodall / Getty Images
Te Rehutai of the New Zealand team or the charge against the British challenger.
The second saw Burling brought up in the starting box by an aggressive Sir Ben Ainslie and lost 500 meters. But that was about to recover at the end of the first beat when the boat hit its straps against the wind and won by 1m 42s.
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As Ainslie put it: “Clearly, they got a click in performance. There we were, watching the kiwis come towards us on a mission. “
The other teams were watching as well and the prospect of an error-free defender is obviously daunting.
American Magic wing clipper Paul Goodison noted, “We all have a lot of work to do to be more competitive against these guys.”
Perhaps the most generous assessment came from former rival Jimmy Spithill, now at the wheel of Italy’s Luna Rossa.
“Clearly, the kiwis have an advantage at the moment. The concern is that the Kiwis are a big step ahead of the challengers. Whoever comes out of this series of challenges has a huge gap to bridge right now … we are seeing it in the water, “said Spithill.
STUFF
Luna Rossa’s Jimmy Spithill talks about closed races at AC75
Burling knows all about taking Spithill’s words with a grain of salt.
But with only two days of racing against rivals before the defenders split up to train alone for two months before the Copa América match that starts on March 6, he is convinced that Te Rehutai’s speed will improve a lot.
“It’s a lot about learning all we can,” he said of the end of this weekend’s warm-up race.
But as a team we have a lot to do in terms of performance.
“The foils… we are going to work very hard to try to take good steps forward in the coming months.
“Where we are sitting right now is probably where the design team was a while ago.
“We are very happy with our performance today. We didn’t do the best job executing our last pre-start, but after that I think we did a good job of getting on the right side for a few turns … some good maneuvers … we made a good profit on that first leg. “
TVNZ
Team NZ gets stuck in their foils before rallying to beat team INEOS UK.
Burling insisted that they could accomplish many things on their own by training on the ship and in the simulator.
He felt they could also improve their work by taking a closer look at how challengers developed tactics in this rapidly developing new class during the Prada Cup series in January and February.
“Today, watching Luna Rossa and American Magic compete, we found it interesting to try to discover different approaches and different methodologies for pre-starts,” he said of the two absorbing races between the two main challengers that were shared.
“It’s very exciting to register correctly (now) and get a good benchmark where everyone is. It’s going to be interesting to see where they all end up
“I’m sure everyone will raise the bar. You just have to look back in history to see how much the boat’s speeds improve in this last little cup period.
“Everyone has a lot to come and a lot to go.”
