When he talks about Oracle burning up a 135 meter lead to only 35 meters in the maneuver at the bottom of the course, he hasn't considered the speed difference in upwind and downwind legs and how that translates to the distance. Oracle didn't really burn up a 135 meter lead. By the vary nature of both boats dropping from 38 knots to 23 knots of boat speed, the distance between them would have been reduced by 40% as well...so just slowing down for the upwind angle closed the distance between them from 135 meters to 82 meters.

The time between them would remain the same, however. If boat A is 20 seconds behind boat B at 50 mph and they both decelerate to 25 mph at an identical rate, boat A is still 20 seconds behind boat B but they are 50% closer together.

Anytime you see these boats drop so much speed in the transition from downwind mode to upwind mode, you will see the distance between them compress. So Oracle only actually gave up 47 meters in that kerfuffle.

This is also why it may pay to round the bottom mark with a bunch of speed, keep that speed for a little while at the expense of sliding a little downwind until you settle on your foils. We've seen pretty dramatic differences in closing distances if you can ease into that deceleration while slowly dropping into the upwind mode (I'm not sure they have this figured out yet). We've seen several dramatic come-from-behinds by the way these guys round the bottom mark...and it's usually the guy that screams into the mark, exits wide, and slowly settles into an upwind mode that makes up a ton of distance.