Dean Barker faces off against former team-mate Russell Coutts in the semifinals of the America's Cup world series match racing regatta in Plymouth.
Emirates Team New Zealand were seeded second and Oracle 5 third after six fleet races over the past two days.
With two second placings and a fourth overnight (NZT), Barker was on 50 points at day's end, six adrift of Artemis who secured two firsts and a second.
The first, second and third seeds go straight through to the match racing semifinals while the lower seeds sail a series of sudden-death races.
The next two days will (Friday and Saturday) see the end of match racing and the final fleet race - a winner-takes-all race to find the Plymouth fleet racing champion - takes place on Sunday night (NZT).
The breeze overnight was light (a shifty 6-12 knots) and once again some of the less-fancied teams showed there are no certainties on the ACWS circuit.
China Team pulled off a well-deserved third place in the third match of the day while the winner of the 34th America's Cup, James Spithill, was eighth. His boss Russell Coutts won the race comfortably after a series of mid-fleet finishes.
The TNZ crew of Barker, Winston Macfarlane, Glenn Ashby, James Dagg and Ray Davies showed again how they can recover from a seemingly impossible position when, in the second race, they trailed in sixth only to finish second but they were also the victims of a wind shift when they slipped from first to fourth.
