Emirates New Zealand are on the brink of securing their rematch with Oracle Team USA in the America’s Cup Match after another day on the Great Sound when they proved impossible to beat once they had got their noses in front.

New Zealand won two of yesterday’s three races, as they had done on Saturday, to open a 4-2 lead over Artemis Racing in the Louis Vuitton America’s Cup Challenger Play-offs Final series.

Artemis, like Land Rover BAR in the semi-finals, are discovering that only a perfect race can beat the Kiwis.

One more win from the possible three races today would result in New Zealand lining up against Oracle on Saturday in a repeat of the 35th America’s Cup Match, in which the American team came back from 8-1 down to win 9-8.

So far in these finals, Artemis have won the race to the first mark in all six races, but have only won two. The other ominous statistic for Artemis is that New Zealand have never lost in the Qualifiers and Play-offs in a race they have led.

New Zealand are so confident with their speed, particularly upwind, that they have begun to avoid any confrontation at the start, preferring a clean getaway, even if they are behind, to taking any kind of risk.

Peter Burling, the New Zealand helmsman, said that Artemis’s decision to go on faster downwind foils gave them a speed advantage on the first reach, but said that they were always confident of coming back

“For us it was all about getting to the bottom mark in good shape and then chipping away from there,” Burling said. “For ourselves we are not too worried if we are behind because we have so much confidence we can run them down.”

Trailing 2-1 overnight, Artemis had sailed an impressive first race yesterday, showing much better speed at the start and building up a big enough lead that they never looked likely to lose, despite one awkward gybe during which they crashed down off their foils with New Zealand then almost sailing into the back of them.

That victory pulled Artemis back to 2-2 and they looked set for a big day, as they seemed to have a speed edge, having gone for shorter high-speed foils. But the wind dropped for the second race and when New Zealand took the lead, they never looked like being caught. Artemis were also handicapped by a problem with the button that Nathan Outteridge, their skipper, uses to control the portside daggerboard.

Outteridge could have done with a day when nothing went wrong after the final race on Saturday, when he fell overboard having slipped as he crossed the boat as the two teams vied for the lead.

As the rest of the crew struggled vainly to keep going in the race, Outteridge faced further peril as the New Zealand boat was coming right at him as he bobbed in the water. “He was coming straight at me,” Outteridge said. “He missed me by about a boat width.”

Needing to win three successive races today, and with lighter winds expected, Outteridge knows that Artemis must find some upwind speed if they are to go through to the America’s Cup match.

“The boat was going really nicely in the first race,” he said. “But in the second race [the wind] got a bit softer and you could see New Zealand had a tick on us upwind.

“At the first mark, we are six from six; it’s more about what we are going to do in the upwinds to keep them behind us.

In the final race of the day, the Swedish team almost pulled off an unlikely win, when a mistimed gybe at the final mark almost brought the boat to a standstill before New Zealand recovered to hold on by only 1.3 seconds.

“I probably gave everyone a bit of heart attack going to that last mark,” Burling said. “It was my mistake. I missed the layline to the other gate. A couple of guys reckon they lost a couple of years.

“It shows how tight this racing is. You make one small mistake and a big lead turns into nothing.”