After having 21 days off to prepare 'Britannia' for the Prada Cup final, INEOS Team UK skipper Sir Ben Ainslie is coy on the modifications his side have made to their boat ahead of the Prada Cup final starting on Saturday.
With the development being the name of the game in the America's Cup, all eyes will be on how beneficial the past three weeks have been for the British.
Ainslie wasn't giving much away in terms of the development of his boat in the pre-race press conference but was confident the hard work of the shore crew wouldn't go to waste.
"I can't give much of an answer because that's getting very technical and in an area that is a big performance differentiator but we've been working hard on that (foils)," Ainslie says. "We worked tirelessly on the boat of course as we pushed hard to get that extra time to make the modifications."
"Our team stuck to the task to get every ounce of performance out of the boat as we know we have to in this game so it's been a tough period for the shore team."
This comes as vast contrast to the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli who've been much more forthcoming with their information about their boat.
"We have a new set of wings on the boat, we worked quite a lot on the sail development," Luna Rossa director and skipper Max Sirena says. "We have new foils, new masks, new sails, new software since last facing Team UK so we feel good about our developments."
After going straight through to the Prada Cup final by winning the round-robin challenger series, Ainslie says they're very confident they have maximised that time to try to get Britannia more competitive.
"In the past two and a half weeks it has been all about making the marginal gains to continue improving our performance," Ainslie says.
After two weeks off since the Prada Cup semi-finals, both sides are looking forward to some tight racing.
The last time these two boats squared off it was the best race of the campaign with nine lead changes and Ainslie feels we could be in for more of the same.
"It's going to be a fantastic fight and that is why you compete because you want to be up against the best," he says. "You want to challenge yourself and be in those situations and I fully expect we are going to have some amazing racing over the next week or so."
Join us on Saturday for live updates of the Luna Rossa v Team UK America's Cup challenger final
