Luna Rossa senior leads the standings after the second day of preliminary America's Cup racing in Naples

A north wind above 15 knots and a sun warming the Caracciolo seafront are the setting for the second day of the preliminary America's Cup regatta.

Perfect conditions in Naples to complete four fleet races, the three foreseen in the original program, plus the one that couldn't take place yesterday when the wind just didn't seem to want to appear on the Gulf. There are two main protagonists in the water: on the one hand there is Luna Rossa senior, who wins the first fleet race and then collects a second, a third and a sixth place. It was enough for the crew with Peter Burling and Marco Gradoni at the helm, and Gianluigi Ugolini and Maria Giubilei trimmers, to secure first place in the general classification with 51 points gained out of the 60 available.

With just two tests to go, the ones that will open the final day tomorrow, the Italian team has a nice little treasure to manage. Emirates Team New Zealand is chasing them on 43 points and Alinghi on 38 while Luna Rossa Youth & Women is still hoping, stuck at 35 points but confident of being able to get back into the top two in the ranking at the last minute who will compete in the final match race, the one-on-one challenge that closes the competition.

However, there was also an unexpected outsider who stole the show on day 2 in Naples: the French team of La Roche-Posay Racing Team who showed up at the start after working late into the night to repair the damage caused by the accident the day before and won two races with authority. In the end, the French team (now at 31 points) is also feeling a little bitter, because there could have been as many as three victories, all consecutive. In the penultimate race, while they were racing towards victory alone, a few hundred meters from the finish line, the French capsized again, exactly as happened in Friday's regatta.

The Youth & Women crew from New Zealand took advantage of this and thus gained a satisfaction that was still missing from the first boat fielded by the reigning champions, more solid in placings but never winning. Their results are constant, like those of Alinghi, while Arc Team USA is more fluctuating, now at 34 points in the standings. The two English boats occupying the last two positions in the ranking performed poorly: GB2 at 29 points precedes GB1 at 28.

However, everything is still in the balance, also because a change of wind is expected for tomorrow. The cards could get mixed up.

"We learned in Cagliari that anything can happen. The Naples regatta course is not at all obvious, it is giving us some beautiful ones" explains Maria Giubilei, Luna Rossa senior trimmer. "We made some mistakes - he admits - but also some good recoveries: we are happy. Tomorrow we will go into the water with a clear, fresh head and try to do two good races to enter the final match race".

Everything is therefore ready for the great epilogue, even if almost 90 thousand accesses to the Race Village on the Lungomare have already been registered today. Among the most appreciated collateral events, the one promoted by Sport e Salute, which brought together seven Olympic champions (Francesca Lollobrigida, Pino Maddaloni, Valerio Vermiglio, Tania Di Mario, Giacomo Galanda, Angelika Savrajuk and Marco Di Costanzo) on a boat with the kids from the Neapolitan suburbs. So that the legacy of the America's Cup does not stop at the event, but can continue to bring the sea even where there is no sea.