(Reuters) - New Zealand took the lead on day one of the fourth round of the SailGP season on Saturday as skipper Peter Burling capitalised on strong starts to take victories in two of the four races held in sunny, breezy conditions on Los Angeles harbour.
New Zealand, who won the first event in Dubai, finished the day in first place on 31 points, ahead of Canada on 28, with three-time defending champions Australia in third.
"It's nice to be on top," said Burling. "It's much nicer how much warmer it is today than yesterday. It was quite cold yesterday," he added.
New Zealand struggled to a ninth-place finish in the third race after being penalised for an early start and were momentarily overshadowed by Martine Grael's Brazil, who led early before Australia's late push secured victory.
Australia, led by skipper Tom Slingsby, staged an impressive comeback to finish the day with a 10-3-1-3 race result, closing the gap to Canada to just one point.
France, who missed the first two events due to boat problems and finished sixth in Sydney, won the final race of the day to be in fourth place.
"Our start wasn't ideal... We wanted to be more dynamic. After a lot of work to improve our overtaking ability, we finished the day in a good position," said French skipper Quentin Delapierre.
Defending champions Spain climbed up to fifth place, just one point ahead of Britain, and the American team, aiming for a podium finish on home soil after finishing last in Sydney, are seventh.
Denmark's performance was marred by an incident when their catamaran collided with a race marker in the first race, causing damage that ruled them out of the rest of the day's racing and cost them 12 event points and eight points off their overall season total.
(Reporting by Angelica Medina in Mexico City; Editing by Toby Davis)
