Productive Day off for LR.

LR had Flight 8 off. But gained ground relative to its adversaries for spot 4 in Group A.

Wight Lightning surprised Örn with strong tactics at the start and winning the lottery of wind shifts. Alinghi beat Oracle, which really indicates there will be a strong battle among the top three squads, with OneWorld being the only unbeaten crew.

Mascalzone Latino lost to Stars&Stripes in a race where the were clearly outmanoeuvered at the start and did not have enough boat speed to take greater advantage of wind shifts that were on offer.

Le Défi, menawhile, almost created a sensation by giving OneWorld a real cold sweat. Luc Pillot showed strong match racing skills with a clearly slower boat and also exploited wind shifts to always maintain close contact with the leader. The end gap was of only 21 seconds.

This leaves Mascalzone and Le Défi winless and facing each other in flight 9 tomorrow. At the same time, LR meets OneWorld and has a chance at redeeming its disillusioning first round.