Britannia has the most potential of any America’s Cup boat, even if we are a little behind rivals

Crucial thing is to keep improving through rounds before peaking for final race in October. Do I feel we can win? Absolutely!

This is it, then. After three years of blood, sweat and tears; three years of planning, designing, building and refining our boats and our performance, the 37th America’s Cup is finally upon us. 
The Louis Vuitton selection series that determines which of the five challengers will face New Zealand in the Cup match in October begins in Barcelona on Thursday. To say we are excited would be an understatement.
There are nerves too, of course. Anyone who watched last week’s preliminary regatta will know we are not yet firing on all cylinders. We won two of our five match races and were clearly a little way off the Kiwis, the Italians and the Americans. But do I still feel we can win this Cup? Absolutely, I do.
We know the potential that exists within our boat Britannia and we know we are nowhere close to unlocking it yet. That is the exciting thing. Will we have the time to unlock it? I hope so.
INside Britannia | The oldest and hardest event to win in international sport https://t.co/eSOPEANoKB#AmericasCup #InsideBritannia pic.twitter.com/cYLU1G8qNm
The important thing to remember is that we do not need to be the fastest boat in the next week. Or even the next two weeks. The way the format of this challenger series works is that all teams face each other twice in a double round robin, after which one team will be eliminated. The four remaining challengers will face each other in the semi-finals, then a final.
The crucial thing is to keep improving through the rounds, hopefully unlocking more and more potential, before peaking for the Cup in October. That is what we have designed our boat to do. And that is why it is exciting that we have headroom.
Of course, we would prefer to be further along the progression pathway than we are. We would like to be more polished. We know we have some key areas to focus on. While we are in reasonable shape downwind, the preliminary regatta exposed our speed upwind and our performance in some of the key manoeuvres.
But things can change quickly. A month or so ago we made a big jump in performance, then we took a slight backwards step for a couple of weeks. It is the same for all of the teams as you try different components and different setups. It is not a linear path. It can be frustrating but certainly the performance in the preliminary regatta was up on where we were in the practice racing.
Crucially, there is still a lot more to come.
In the America’s Cup you have various options when you launch a campaign. You can play it safe and refine a design that is already out there but which may have limited scope for improvement. We purposely chose to be ultra-aggressive, building a test boat from scratch with our partners, Mercedes F1, before building a Cup boat based on our learnings from that. Why? Because we want to win this thing.
It is a risk-reward game. We are a little behind right now but I am still happy with the path that we chose. I genuinely believe that of all the teams, perhaps alongside the French, we have got the most potential left on the table. If we can realise that, we can be in a strong position.
There are other reasons to be positive. I was particularly happy with the way Dylan Fletcher integrated with the team as we worked together as helmsmen during the preliminary regatta.
Promoting Dylan to the race boat in place of Giles Scott was one of the most difficult decisions of my career because Giles had done nothing wrong. Dylan simply started banging on the door in a way that was difficult to ignore.
Coming from a two-handed background in the 49er (as opposed to Giles and I, who are historically single-handed sailors) his communication skills are very strong. 
The work Dylan did with Stu Bithell in the build-up to Tokyo 2020 has been very useful. As a Moth world champion, the experience he has of sailing high-performance boats in difficult conditions is also noteworthy.
It was not a decision taken lightly, that is for sure. It was something we spent a lot of time analysing with the coaches. We pored over the data, the communications – you name it. 
As I say, it is no slight on Giles. Fortunately, the way he reacted has been exemplary and he has redoubled his efforts. As head of sailing, as a mentor to Dylan, in the simulator, where he races against both of us, Giles remains absolutely integral.
Also, a note for our cyclor team, some of whom had never been in a yacht race in their lives. They were really tested in the preliminary regatta and came through with a strong performance. This gives us confidence we have the power to push Britannia as hard as any competitor.
We are a strong team and we are all in this together. Some people may have watched us in the preliminaries and been underwhelmed. All I can say is we are in a much better position than where we were in Auckland or Bermuda. And we showed in both of those Cups that we could make big strides during the competition.
We are probably dark horses again this time. But we still believe. The America’s Cup is one of the toughest challenges in world sport. In 173 years Britain has never won it. That is what we are trying to do. 
It is daunting, but it is exciting too – because we are in the thick of it now. We are in the battle. It is going to be fascinating to see how the weeks ahead play out.