Opening success for British crew as Stars & Stripes pays the penalty

First blood has gone to GBR Challenge in their best-of-seven quarter-final of the Louis Vuitton Cup, the victory taking the British boat a step closer to the America's Cup.

But it is a very tenuous step, one that will not bring any relief to the nerves in the British camp and was achieved only by the skill of the starting helmsman Andy Beadsworth and the crew in the pre-start manoeuvres in securing a penalty against Team Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes.

The outcome of the race hung on that penalty, a 270-degree turn to be taken at any time during the race or offloaded by Stars & Stripes imposing a penalty of their own on Wight Lightning, and the American crew left their effort until the last minute after leading the race from the start. Ken Read, the Stars & Stripes skipper, made an attempt to offload the penalty but failed to make it effective.

The spinnaker of Stars & Stripes was dropped and the jib hoisted and Read turned the boat towards the British boat, skippered by Ian Walker, running up from astern. He was successful in obtaining a penalty against Wight Lightning but in the process obtained another against himself. Wight Lightning had by then sailed past and Stars & Stripes still had to make its penalty turn.

The downside to this result is that for most of the time Stars & Stripes displayed clearly superior speed and it may prove difficult for GBR Challenge to overcome the most experienced players in this game. Stars & Stripes was noticeably quicker upwind, although Wight Lightning recovered some of the deficit on the downwind legs. The crew received a compliment from the Stars & Stripes navigator Peter Isler. "Those guys sail well," he said, "I think they sail tactically as well as any team out there."

The most notable change in the racing has been in the increase in aggressiveness. Penalties were awarded in three of the four races, and in the other the Swedish Victory Challenge easily beat Le Défi Areva from France.

When Russell Coutts in the Swiss Alinghi met Francesco de Angelis in Prada's Luna Rossa it was like a repeat of the last America's Cup, but this time the Italian was more aggressive and much more competitive.

They started bow to bow off the line and Alinghi gained the initial advantage through a windshift, but as before Coutts soon had the favoured right-hand side. De Angelis came back on the run and his bow just touched the stern of Alinghi and he was penalised.

Later in the race a second attack downwind by De Angelis put Luna Rossa ahead. But that lead was short-lived; on the beat, Coutts went past to win. And when the Italians dropped their spinnaker in the water as they were making their penalty turn, the time ticked away so that they lost a close match by 1min 18sec.

The match between Chris Dickson in Oracle-BMW Racing and Peter Gilmour in OneWorld began with a protest flag flown by Oracle, which declined to proceed with the "technical protest" after the race after being awarded a penalty against OneWorld on the second leg. That penalty turn, taken by One World at the end of the fifth leg, let Oracle-BMW Racing through into a lead which it held to the end of the race.