Peter Lester: Pulling ahead and plotting to stay there

Opinion

A year out from the America's Cup it is looking very encouraging for Team New Zealand but their success so far in the 12th pre-regatta in Valencia must be kept in context.

They have clearly raised the bar; however their main rivals will react, so it is essential they keep on developing.

Following the last regattas, Team New Zealand were disappointed in the performance of the crew and reliability of the boat.

They moved to Valencia quite late, had a lot of work to do and by the time they got to the regattas they were tired.

They were pretty honest about where they were at as people and have addressed some of the issues.

They have freshened up physically and mentally and have targeted this event as a crew and as an organisation.

They look composed, confident and driven. They look more together in terms of the heart of the organisation and everyone has stepped up.

In the races they won against Alinghi and BMW Oracle Racing, their weather team was spot-on so it was nice to hear in some of the audio the afterguard giving a big rap to meteorologist Roger Badham and his team, which is significant.

It means they trust them, they believe in them, which indicates they are maturing as an organisation.

If that respect is shown for the weather team it will be shown for the design team, the sail-making team - the whole team. Respect throughout the organisation was evident in Peter Blake's campaigns in 1995 and 2000.

In terms of crew work they are back to what we expect. They haven't made a mistake; we haven't seen a broken sail, we haven't seen a bad mark rounding.

The only glitch was the pre-start against Luna Rossa's James Spithill. But he is the best starter out there.

In terms of the boat, whatever they have done to remodel it since the last regattas it has got faster.

In the design context it will be interesting to see how they react, given the concept of NZL84, for their new boat.

For designers Marcelino Botin and Clay Oliver the performance of NZL84 will give them a tremendous amount of confidence.

The top four teams have gone down different design paths to Team New Zealand. With its fuller bow, NZL84 is significantly different from the other new boats.

The flipside of that is Team New Zealand are not in the same design window as their opposition, which could be a strength or a weaknesses.

Right now, after these observations, you'd say it is a strength.

They'll be optimistic about stepping up even further, which they'll need to do.

In the light, Alinghi looked a little sticky, the first time I have seen the team in SUI75 not look so flash - both the way the boat was performing and the body language of the crew.

Oracle's performance in this regatta very much resembles Team New Zealand's in last month's regattas. They are not quite as slick as usual.

Luna Rossa are really steady. I don't know if they're as quick as Team NZ but they keep them in the game and play the Alinghi low-risk style.

Team New Zealand have set the benchmark so far. The challenge now for them is to stay there.