Today is the last day in the America’s Cup practice racing period.

It is clear that teams are hiding their real performance potential for the long haul all the way around the course, maybe showing a few glimpses.

Artemis Racing continue to get more wins defeating SoftBank Team Japan, Groupama Team France and Oracle Team USA yesterday.

Artemis are smooth and fast. The question still remains: Are the others just using these races for testing, not for winning? In several starts earlier in the week Oracle looked impressive then pulled up short.

With two days left in the recent sailing session each team, except the “lone wolf” Team New Zealand, gave some of their thoughts about their performance and goals for the remaining 28 days before the matches start for real in an AC Event Authority interview. Team New Zealand have yet to join the fray.

Jimmy Spithill, skipper of Oracle, said: “What we are getting now is preseason ... it is an indicator.

“Are teams showing their full colours? Probably not. There are probably a few different set-ups and things teams have to improve but it just shows you how tough this will be. And this will be one heck of a boat race.”

Speaking for Land Rover BAR, skipper Ben Ainslie said: “Each of the teams is at as different stage of their development. For our team we still have a huge amount left in the tank in terms of upgrades to the boat and the performance and we’re certainly going to need that in terms of how the racing has gone for us so far.

“But that’s the nature of being a new team in this America’s Cup. We’re confident we have a lot of potential gain between now and the Cup.”

Artemis have been the most consistent winners. Their skipper, Nathan Outteridge, says that it is time to focus on tactics in these superfast AC Class racers.

“We’re really looking hard at our racing and tactics,” he said. “Racing up to now has been delivering the boat around the course with a couple of combative moves against the other teams. Now we are looking at how we can cover another boat. We saw some tacking duels with Oracle in the last race.

“We’ve been analysing that a lot because we don’t actually get a lot of chances to race the other boats. Now the race periods are a little bit of a speed check-in but mostly about our performance and analysing our racing decisions.”

As one of the latecomers to the America’s Cup, Team Japan had a steep learning curve as a team. Granted they have their skipper Dean Barker who is an old hand at the America’s Cup and some of his mates that he has brought with him. But as a team they had much to learn.

Kazuhiko Sofuku, Team Japan’s general manager and a Cup and match racing veteran himself, put Team Japan in perspective.

“Overall, we are pretty happy where we are,” he said. “There is some hard work to come; the best part of the campaign is coming.

Franck Cammas, skipper of newcomers Team France, was upbeat even though his team has the worst win-loss record in the practice races to date.

“We are happy with the speed in a straight line,” he said.

“We have room for development of the team and the crew and to improve the systems.”

“In one month we have to be ready,” he quipped with a smile. “We have to take the time every day to work on it.”

Team New Zealand have not entered a practice race against another team although they have made some straight-line matchups with the British team.

“They have also been whipping around the sound making some very sharp practice turns and staying on their foils which they say are foils from their AC45 test boat.

“Skipper Glenn Ashby commented on where his team stand after only a couple of weeks on the water in Bermuda.

“We’ve been welcomed with open arms by Bermuda,” Ashby said. “I don’t think we would have wanted to arrive much later. Racing starts fairly soon.

“I guess like most of the teams we have been in sort of a hiatus since we’ve done our last event last year in Japan.

“The eyes of the world will be on Bermuda fairly shortly. Hopefully Team New Zealand can be mixing it up with the other teams in the early stages and hopefully we can come through with the goods at the end.”