Skipper B for Luna Rossa, Philippe Presti presented his analysis during an interview with Sports.fr's Axel Capron.

Familiar face on the one-design circuit, Philippe Presti believes that the boats are very close in terms of potential and the real competition will be made by the team.

"The level of development concerning the boat is more likely to decrease than increase", he said. "Obliging the challengers to remain in Valencia generated a healthy emulation between the teams".

"The not fortunate syndicates could sail with two boats by organizing matches between them and some have progressed in an incredible way. You just have to expect some surprises and it will not be easy for the favourites. All the matches will be very competitive".

"I'm sure that the difference will be made by the men", he added. "Everybody will want to have the best start, it will be really essential. So, we have to look after the operation of afterguard, the strategy and the capacity to quickly develop our tools, in particular the sails".

In addition to the obvious skills of the team members, one of the real advantages of the Luna Rossa Challenge should be ITA 86 and ITA 94, presented by Philippe Presti as "two very powerful platforms".

"They are quietly close, from the same family, even if one of them is more radical with clearly visible differences", he said about the two new boats. "The idea which prevailed for the first one was to be in the narrow and square family. The same was done for the second one but in a "worse" and more radical approach".

"When you're considering the fleet, you can observe that everybody arrives at the same solution and we are very close with Alinghi or Team New Zealand", he added, underlining that the real difference should be the constant improvement.

Pre-race speculation had all eyes on "four guns" (Alinghi, Oracle, Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand) as the favorites but Philippe Presti considering some other syndicates as possible contenders.

"Shosholoza made very large progress and, according to what we could observe, they are rather regular", he said. "The French have in my opinion a good base of development and a good crew, the Swedes gave them the means, the Spaniards won some experience with the arrival of Paul Cayard and have many ressources, Mascalzone, a team we sailed, showed a large potential, their boat seems to go well".

It's too much teams as, after the LV Act 13 in which "some teams will just try to break nothing just before the beginning of the Cup" and the two rounds robin, only the best four challengers will be qualified for the semis.

For the former Areva Challenge's helmsman, there is no doubt that Luna Rossa will be one of them.

"We’ve got the weapons and we are going to show it, we are going to fight to win [the Louis Vuitton Cup]", he concluded. "Last year, we had some very close occasion to defeating the other bigs. We don't and the result is that we are not a real favourite. Finally it is probably good".