America's Cup 2021: Team New Zealand and Luna Rossa locked at 3-3 but low action racing...

[ASFN Admin]

New Zealand and Luna Rossa shared the spoils yet again on day three of the 36th America’s Cup match on Saturday, making it 3-3 in the first-to-seven series. The pattern is becoming uncanny: one boat gets ahead at the start, and goes on to win by a nautical mile. Then the other one comes back and does the exact same thing. Luna Rossa won the first race on Saturday after deploying their famous ‘high, slow mode’ - the same mode they used to good effect against Ineos Team UK in last month’s Prada Cup - in light conditions of between 8-9 knots after both boats found themselves early for their passage back to the start line and were forced to slow down. It was New Zealand who struggled to get back up on their foils and racing again. America's Cup 2021 boats: How do they work and what is foiling? Although the hosts kept the gap steady throughout the race, there were no passing lanes on Course A and Luna Rossa made no mistakes, hogging the favoured left side of the course which was unaffected by the fleet of spectator boats and taking any opportunity they could to give their rivals a hard time. “I don’t want to gybe too early as I want to give him ‘gas’ at the top,” Luna Rossa’s Francesco Bruni was heard to say to his co-helm Jimmy Spithill as they discussed the rounding of one mark and the possibility of giving New Zealand’s helmsman Pete Burling a bit of dirty air. Luna Rossa eventually took victory by 18 seconds to grab a 3-2 lead. It was a very different story in race six of the series as Luna Rossa hit a light patch after a gybe in the pre-start box and really struggled to get back up to speed, arriving late to the line. New Zealand were already long gone. By the top mark the Kiwi boat was 51 seconds ahead, a physical distance of around 800 m on the water. And the gap only increased from there, New Zealand winning by a massive 1min41sec to level the series up again at 3-3. “We were happy with our positioning; unfortunately we got caught in a light spot and couldn’t get the boat going back to the line, almost a reversal of the first race,” Spithill said. “There weren’t a lot of passing lines from then on. It’s a bit of a minefield out there from the start box and we couldn’t get the boat to accelerate.”

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