America's Cup: Team New Zealand's 'dry lap'

Emirates Team New Zealand and SoftBank Team Japan compete during America's Cup qualifying on the Great Sound in Bermuda. Photo / AP.

Team New Zealand have become the first team to complete a "dry lap" around the race course, achieving 100 per cent flight time in this morning's big win over Team France on the penultimate day of the America's Cup qualifiers.

After recording a flight time 99.6 per cent in their convincing first up win over Dean Barker's Team Japan earlier this morning, Emirates Team New Zealand completed a perfect race in their second effort of the day.

With the teams capable of keeping the new generation America's Cup Class catamarans up on its foils through both upwind and downwind manoeuvres, it is theoretically possible for a team to get around the race course without its hulls touching down in the water. Until today, no team had been able to pull it off in a race.

"At this level, it should be a given," insisted helmsman Peter Burling afterwards. "For ourselves, it's something we've been trying to do for a long time and we've definitely done dry laps back home.

"I thought we were pretty close in that first race to doing it as well and all the teams up here are incredibly close to doing it as well.

"Later on in the event, I think you'll see everyone doing it in every race."

Team NZ were put under little pressure by their opponents today, they burnt Team Japan for speed off the line in the opening race to record a wire-to-wire 52 second win. The second race against the French was even more dominant, as they demolished Franck Cammas' team by a final delta of 4 min 6 sec.

It was a good day of results all round for Team NZ, with Swedish team Artemis doing the Kiwis a massive favour by toppling Oracle Team USA in the second race of the day.

That result has opened the door for Team NZ to take out the qualifiers, but they will need to beat Oracle tomorrow. If the teams finish on level pegging, Oracle will win the qualifiers and take a crucial bonus point through to the America's Cup match.