Luna Rossa led at every gate of Sunday's first race, and Emirates Team New Zealand's second place was enough to lock in the other spot in the match race final. The Sardinia final will be sailed again, this time off Naples.
Peter Burling won Race 7 of the Louis Vuitton 38th America's Cup Preliminary Regatta on Sunday. Luna Rossa 1 led at every gate and finished in 19 minutes 33 seconds, taking the Italians' third race win in Naples. Emirates Team New Zealand was 13 seconds behind.
That second place was worth more than a win to Nathan Outteridge's crew. The Kiwis now have 52 points, 11 clear of Tudor Team Alinghi in third. One race can swing the points by eight at most, so nobody can reach them. The final will be Luna Rossa against Emirates Team New Zealand, as it was in Sardinia. The final is a single winner-takes-all race, so neither side carries its fleet-racing points into it.
Lighter air, left side
Saturday had been gusty, with the wind swinging between 9 and 18 knots. Sunday's sea breeze was softer, around 10 to 12 knots, and patchy. The AC40s could stay foiling through the lulls, but getting from one patch of pressure to the next was the hard part.
The course had changed too. In practice the right-hand side paid on every beat, and that's how Luna Rossa won all three practice races. On Sunday the left paid. The two Italian crews, who have logged more days on these waters than most, were quick to go that way.
The fleet split for the start, four boats heading left and five right. Burling was aggressive in the pre-start, forcing the British and then the Swiss back and burning off time. Team USA came off its foils near the top of the box and started last. Luna Rossa 1 started at the pin, with GB2 on its hip and Outteridge holding it in for the first few seconds. Once it could tack, the Italian boat had the height and speed to cross the fleet.
Burling rounded the first gate at 3 minutes 18 seconds, five seconds ahead of Outteridge and seven clear of La Roche-Posay Racing Team. The French split away into clean air on the run and were second at the bottom gate, with the Kiwis third after the first lap.
Outteridge sits on the French
On the second beat, France went back to the right looking for pressure, and it cost them. Outteridge slam-tacked on top of Quentin Delapierre and Diego Botín and forced them to tack away. The Kiwis rounded the third gate second, 18 seconds behind Burling, with France now third.
A top-three finish would put the Kiwis in the final, so Outteridge concentrated on keeping France behind him rather than chasing the leader. The crew with Iain Jensen, his 49er partner at the Olympics, sounded more settled with every race. At the last top gate Outteridge hit the layline into the left-hand turn exactly, and the French lost more ground.
Burling was never threatened. His lead reached 350 metres on the second lap. It was down to 13 seconds by the finish, after Luna Rossa 1 came back across to cover the left. Burling said the crew had been worried the sea breeze might be late, and were glad to be racing in it. Asked whether he was already thinking about the final, Marco Gradoni kept it simple. "Our goal was to win it and we managed to do it," he said, adding that the course had been much more open and shifty than in practice.
After a scrappy start to Saturday, the Kiwis finished second, third, second and second.
Further back
France finished third, 44 seconds down. GB1 came through from seventh at the first gate to finish fourth. It was a clean race for a British crew that hasn't had many this week.
Jake Pye and Erica Dawson's Emirates Team New Zealand Women and Youth crew was fifth. They rounded the first gate fifth, slipped to eighth by the third, and gained heavily on the last beat. Dawson had her family on the shore in Naples, including her 11-month-old son. GB2 finished sixth. Luna Rossa 2, fourth at each of the first four gates, faded to seventh.
Alinghi came into the day needing to win both races to reach the final. At the top of the course the umpires penalised the Swiss for getting too close to Emirates Team New Zealand. Kiwi Phil Robertson and his crew finished eighth, 1 minute 49 seconds back, which ended their hopes. Team USA never recovered from the pre-start touchdown and crossed a second behind them in ninth.
Provisional standings after Race 7
| Pos | Team | R1 | R2 | R3 | R4 | R5 | R6 | R7 | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Luna Rossa 1 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 5 | 9 | 8 | 10 | 61 |
| 2 | Emirates Team New Zealand | 6 | 8 | 3 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 9 | 52 |
| 3 | Tudor Team Alinghi | 2 | 9 | 9 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 3 | 41 |
| =4 | Luna Rossa 2 Women and Youth | 7 | 6 | 7 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 4 | 39 |
| =4 | La Roche-Posay Racing Team | 5 | RET | 5 | 10 | RET | 10 | 8 | 39 |
| 6 | Emirates Team New Zealand Women and Youth | 4 | 7 | 2 | 7 | 10 | 2 | 6 | 38 |
| 7 | American Racing Challenger Team USA | 10 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 7 | 3 | 2 | 36 |
| 8 | GB1 | 3 | 3 | 8 | 2 | 5 | 7 | 7 | 35 |
| 9 | Cobham-Ultra GB2 Women and Youth | 8 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 34 |
Points per race: 10 for a win, dropping one point per place. RET: retired. Shaded rows mark the two boats confirmed for the match race final. Provisional, calculated from the Race 7 finishing order; order among tied teams to be confirmed from official results.
Provisional, calculated from the Race 7 finishing order. Order among tied teams to be confirmed from official results.
Race 8 decides the rest of the order, with five points covering fourth to ninth. Then comes the final. Luna Rossa beat the Kiwis in the match race in Sardinia. Before this regatta Outteridge said Naples was a chance to work on what the team identified there. He now gets another go at Burling.
