Prada prepares to hoist a spinnaker during Friday's race. The Italian team trails the best-of-9 series 4-3.

Cayard, cool in his remarkable comeback from a 3-1 deficit, solved the fluky breezes of the Hauraki Gulf, figuring the wind pressure on the right side would be greater at the start, and led Prada after all six legs Friday.

AmericaOne's 1-minute, 6-second victory was its third straight as it took a 4-3 lead in the best-of-9 challenger finals. The Italians never were in the race after making the mistake of starting on the left side. Now they must win Saturday or be eliminated.

Cayard, an aggressive sailor, won't let up.

"Why would we?" he said. "Absolutely not."

One more victory and Cayard can take aim at the next target, defending champion New Zealand, in the best-of-9 finals starting Feb. 19 for sailing's top prize. The Kiwis have been practicing with their two boats while the trials, which began Oct. 18 with 11 potential challengers, have honed the skills of the crews aboard AmericaOne and Prada.

The Americans, under Cayard's strong leadership, have gotten better as the series has progressed. Even when he had dinner with tactician John Kostecki with AmericaOne trailing 3-1, Cayard remained confident.

"We truly didn't even talk about yacht racing," Kostecki said. "We were just having some fun, relaxed. We're both winners and we knew we were going to come back."

Prada skipper Francesco de Angelis better change something if Italy is to stay in contention to win its first America's Cup. He kept his boat on the water after Friday's loss, trying out a different mainsail.

"We started racing in October so for the crews it's been a very long period," de Angelis said. "I don't think anybody's thinking about getting any rest, just think about the next two races."

Or one.

AmericaOne has no reason to change after its best race of the series. Its crew work was sharp. In the last four races, it has lead at 22 of 24 marks.

"We're not going to change much," Kostecki said. "Things are going well so we're just going to keep pushing hard."

AmericaOne led by a massive 2:31 halfway through the 18½-mile race, then sailed conservatively the rest of the way as Prada followed far astern.

"A half-hour before the start, there was more pressure to the left," Cayard said. "Once (the wind) filled, we really felt strong the wind would go right and it went right about 10 degrees."

"We felt that by going all the way to the right we were playing AmericaOne's game," Prada tactician Torben Grael said. "You can't guess right all the time."

In 1995, New Zealand swept Cayard's Young America 5-0 to win the Cup off San Diego, only the second team from outside the United States to win the event since it began in 1851. Its leader, Sir Peter Blake, said his current boats are much faster than his last one.

So is Cayard's.

In 1995, he skippered Dennis Conner's Stars & Stripes to win the challenger finals, then switched to the faster but still slow Young America. In 1992, he was at the helm of Il Moro di Venezia of Italy, which lost the America's Cup finals 4-1 to America3.

Cayard also came back from a 3-1 deficit that year against New Zealand in the challenger finals.

"Like that saying goes, 'we've seen this movie before,' and, hopefully, it's going to play out the same way," said Cayard, representing San Francisco's St. Francis Yacht Club.

It didn't take long for Cayard to pull away on the first leg, a 3 1/8-mile trip into the wind.

The seventh race was postponed Thursday because of light wind. Prada didn't get much of a push from Friday's breeze either, although the wind at the start was 16-17 knots from the southwest.

Cayard picked the right side and quickly took control as the wind was stronger there.

AmericaOne led by 1:19 after the first leg, a lead so huge that it maintained control even though it broke a vang, a piece of equipment that holds down the boom, early in the second leg, the first of three with the wind blowing from behind.

Prada gained six seconds on that leg, cutting the lead to 1:13.

The parade continued in front of a flotilla of spectator boats as AmericaOne again showed its superiority going upwind. It added 1:18 to its lead and reached the midpoint of the race with a comfortable margin of 2:31.

On the next downwind leg, Prada sliced off 20 seconds, then gained another 40 on the upwind leg. But with a final leg of just 3 1/8 miles left, Cayard still led by 1:31.