Team New Zealand skipper Dean Barker says his team are not surprised that Desafio Espanol are taking some shaking in the challenger series semifinals in Valencia.
Luna Rossa booked their place in the final of the Louis Vuitton Cup with a comfortable 33-second win over BMW Oracle Racingyesterday.
But Emirates Team New Zealand were unable to do the same, losing to the Spanish by an agonising 15s.
The next race is early tomorrow morning (NZT) after a reserve day yesterday.
"We would like to be in a similar position to what Luna Rossa are in right now but we knew going into this that Desafio would be a very tough team," Barker said.
"That's certainly proved to be the case. You certainly can't afford to drop your guard at all. If you get your decisions slightly wrong or don't get the better of the start, or whatever it is, if you give them a sniff of the lead they are a very hard team to pass, try as we might today. The guys did a good job trying to keep in close and present some opportunities but the final overtaking manoeuvre was not there for us today."
The New Zealanders opted for the left at the start but it was the right which had the better pressure and the Spanish got their nose ahead and never let go.
"It was again, a very difficult race track. This northeasterly gradient isn't that straightforward. We favoured the left-hand side. There wasn't [anything] there on the left that we could capitalise on."
The New Zealanders also had a couple of bad gybes on the second run, which didn't help.
Barker said the bad gybes were not the result of gear failure.
"Things didn't go as good or smoothly as we would have liked. We'll focus on that and won't do that again in the future."
