By JULIE ASH
With the fleet racing now complete, Emirates Team New Zealand boss Grant Dalton is happy his team and their race boat NZL82 are not far off the pace of their main rivals, Alinghi and BMW Oracle Racing.
The final two fleet races were sailed in breezy conditions off Marseille.
The crews had yesterday off in preparation for the start of the match-racing, which begins tonight.
Oracle won the final two races, with Alinghi third in race one and second in race two.
Team New Zealand, with Dean Barker at the helm, finished second in race one and third in race two.
On his syndicate's website, Dalton said he was satisfied with his team's performance after three days of racing.
"NZL82 has been very reliable in conditions that were at the top of the range for which these yachts were designed. We had no significant damage," Dalton said.
"The crew had not raced together before and they're shaking down well.
"We still have a lot of work to do to mould them into a precise, potent [America's Cup] match-racing team, but we have more than 1000 days to do that.
"I am very optimistic about the way this team is shaping."
The final two races were close, with Oracle finishing a mere 13s ahead of Team New Zealand and 24s ahead of Alinghi.
"We are just a click off the pace - that's better than I expected. In fact, we are doing better than I expected," Dalton said.
"We made a couple of tactical errors, and in short courses like this there's little opportunity to recover."
Each team will now contest two matches a day until Saturday.
* New Zealand tactician Brad Butterworth is now part of the Alinghi management team following the sacking off his long-time friend Russell Coutts.
The Swiss syndicate yesterday revealed the management team that will take them through to the 2007 cup.
Joining Butterworth in the team is Australian Grant Simmer, who has been the syndicate's general manager for the past year, and newcomer Patrick Magyar, a Swiss, who will work alongside Simmer as joint general manager.
