Groupama Team France are not supposed to be in this position; they are not supposed to have beaten anyone at all.

Favourites to finish bottom in the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup Qualifiers, Franck Cammas and his team are instead in a three-way fight for the right to move on to the challenger play-offs.

An impressive win over Land Rover BAR yesterday has put them there, and while the shine was taken off somewhat by a heavy defeat at the hands of SoftBank Team Japan, Cammas is more than happy with his team’s position.

“Beating the English was very satisfying, as it’s a very high-performance team,” Cammas said.

“We know that there’s always a great confrontation between the French and the English, so being able to beat them is always very special for us.”

Cammas was especially pleased with the speed of the boat upwind, which, along with two serious mistakes from BAR, allowed Team France to overcome a poor start to eventually register a win by 53sec.

“We saw that the boat was quick when beating [the English], which is very positive in these conditions,” he said.

Team France have struggled in previous races when the wind has picked up, and that issue struck again in the second race against Dean Barker and Team Japan. However, Cammas also acknowledged that the physical demands placed on his team in the first race took their toll.

Not that anything should be taken away from SoftBank and Barker, who got out to a typically fast start and stayed there. Doing ten knots more than their opponents as they crossed the start line, SoftBank pulled away and eventually won by 2min 34sec.

“In the second race, the wind picked up and it was physically hard for us to keep the boat on track,” Cammas said. “We made a few mistakes and so it was complicated to fight our way back, as we were losing more and more energy and we know that we’re still limited in terms of human energy for controlling the boat. Everything went a bit pear-shaped in this race.”

Still, going into the second phase of qualifying, Team France have two points, the same number as Artemis Racing and SoftBank. And Cammas believes the team will only improve from here.

“We could not have sailed like this a few weeks ago,” he said. “We’re pleased with the outcome of this part of the qualifier.

“It’s very positive to end on two points after this first round robin.”

For his part, Barker is looking to turn some of the opportunities that his fast starts create into more wins as the qualifiers reach their climax.

“We feel fast, we’re generally sailing the boat well and we’ve had opportunities to win lots of races,” he said. “So we just got to make sure we learn the lessons from the mistakes and hopefully in the next round we can get some good results.”