Sailing: Peter Burling hoping New Zealand SailGP Team continue to raise the bar in France

The New Zealand SailGP Team has won the last two events on the circuit. Photo: Jon Buckle/SailGP

The New Zealand SailGP team are on a hot streak, but helmsman Peter Burling insists his crew don't have a target on their backs as the series takes to French waters this weekend.

The global foiling league stops in Saint-Tropez this weekend, with the New Zealand team riding the momentum of back-to-back event wins and sitting second in the overall standings on 32 points – just four points back from Australia.

The Kiwis' rise over the past events have drawn plenty of attention to the team, who were without an appearance in a podium race for their entire debut season.

They finally got there in Plymouth at the start of August – the third stop of the new season – impressing in the five fleet races of the event to earn their place in the three-boat contest for the event title.

Now, they are two-for-two in podium races, backing up their success in Plymouth with a win at the weather-impacted stop in Denmark three weeks ago.

"I think we're definitely excited with the position we're in and it's great to have those couple of wins under our belt, but I think there are a few teams sailing really well at the moment and we're just concentrating on ourselves and making sure we continue to try set the bar high," Burling told the Herald.

"That's our goal as a group. We'd prefer to be leading from the front and setting the standard, so that's what we're trying to do."

The closest the Kiwi group got to breaking through into a podium race last season was at the event in Saint-Tropez. They looked odds on to do so heading into the final fleet race, but that race turned into a disaster and they finished in last place which saw them miss out on the podium race by one point.

Burling said while the crew could take confidence in the majority if their performance at the venue last season, differing conditions and having more experience on the vessel meant they couldn't read too much into how things played out.

"We had a pretty solid event here last year. It was a bit of a shame last year just missing the final, but we're looking forward to trying to put together another good event here and keep our momentum."

The first two events of this season followed a familiar pattern for the New Zealand team. While they had been able to finish inside the top three during fleet races, those results were mixed in with some at the other end of the leaderboard and plenty of mid-fleet finishes, ultimately seeing them miss the main event by minimal margins.

But that changed in Plymouth, where they finished among the top two in four of the five fleet races, before winning the podium race. In Copenhagen, they won all four races.

While the results have changed for the better, Burling said there wasn't a lot that had changed in their approach and preparation, and that the results were a matter of all their work finally coming together.

"We're improving lots of little areas that we've been working on for a long time, and managing to put it all together in events.

"For a while there we had been very close to breaking through to finals like we have done in these last two and anything can happen from there. It's been great to put together a couple of complete events where we didn't make too many mistakes."

The event signals the halfway point to the New Zealand leg of the series, number 10 of the 12-leg circuit, which takes place in Christchurch in March.