"We've still got a lot of things to improve on. We're getting there, but that was probably not even up to our standards at the end there."
The Kiwis can finish as high as fourth overall, and have two races tomorrow to try and secure that spot. That would give them a slim chance of competing in tomorrow's season finale, if one of the three finalists – set to be Australia, USA and Japan – suffer damage to their boats and are unable to take the start line.
It was particularly frustrating for the Kiwis in the final race of the day - a race where the Japanese team were clocked at speeds of over 90kph, but there were still pockets where the wind died away and made things difficult.
The Kiwis found themselves in one of these pockets, falling off their foils and struggling to get the boat going again.
"We didn't do it to the level we probably should have, so we need to really work on that tomorrow," Tuke admitted afterwards.
"It was pretty tricky, actually," New Zealand sailor Liv Mackay added. "We had some really good moments with stuff we've been practicing all week and executing that, but it was quite a difficult racecourse so we didn't really take the gains where we could have. It was a bit tough."
The day started in fine fashion for the Kiwis, with a third-place finish in the opening race of the event.
In a battle against Spain and Great Britain for fourth place overall, the Kiwis pushed throughout the course. While there were instances where they weren't quite as clean as they would have liked coming out of turns and lost some speed, they were able to recover quickly.
Great Britain, who were also slow off the starting line, took over after the first leg – taking the opposite side of the course to most of the teams – and flew to a big lead which proved to be too much to make up as they claimed first.
New Zealand and Australia had a tight battle for second, though Australia got the better of it while New Zealand finished third.
What was most interesting was the aggression of the Australian team, with driver Tom Slingsby showing no signs of taking his foot off the gas despite his team already being a starter in tomorrow's US$1 million grand final race, and their boat having been damaged in practice a couple of days prior.
Slingsby again provided some excitement in the second race as he looked to undercut the Spanish team around the final mark; getting extremely close to a collision before picking up a penalty for not giving the Spanish team enough room.
The Kiwis were unable to get ahead of the field in the second and third races, finishing in the back end of the fleet, leaving them sitting sixth on the event ladder, five points behind Great Britain and three behind Spain in their push for fourth overall.
While Australia made some aggressive moves, fellow finalists USA took absolutely no risk in order to protect their boat to ensure they would line up for the three-boat shootout final, and likely disappointed the home fans with some mid-table finishes.
The other finalist – Japan – sailed well. Without taking too many risks, the Japanese team took out the final race of the day, improving as the event went on; finishing sixth in race one and second in race two.
Watch the SailGP grand final live tomorrow. Coverage from 10am on Sky Sport and free-to-air on nzherald.co.nz/sailgp
