Luna Rossa say they will continue to battle on against Team New Zealand, but accept that their latest America's Cup adventure could be about to end.
Team NZ pulled off another comfortable victory over the Italians in race six of the challengers' final, crossing the finish line 1min 57sec ahead to go 5-1 up.
Weather permitting, skipper Dean Barker and his crew could wrap up the best-of-13 series on Sunday (NZ time), when races seven and eight are scheduled.
Along with the Louis Vuitton Cup, the winners of the challengers' final get the right to go head to head with America's Cup defenders Oracle Team USA in September for sailing's biggest prize.
Team NZ's polished work and boat speed advantage were again in evidence in San Francisco Bay on Saturday as they got the edge at the start and simply pulled away.
Luna Rossa's British helmsman, Chris Draper, had an air of resignation when asked what went wrong at the start.
While he said it would have been good to have done better in that phase of the contest, he felt it wouldn't have made much difference.
"We can talk about the start as much as we want, but the cold reality of it is that they're going to sail past us whether to windward or leeward," he said.
"It's pretty frustrating. It's times like this that it's not the mistakes we make right now on the course, but the mistakes we made months and months and months ago."
Luna Rossa, the only syndicate with a one-boat campaign, were the underdogs heading into the regatta.
Draper promised they wouldn't exit without a fight.
"We'll go and give it everything we can in the last two races."
As Team NZ built up a comfortable margin, they lifted the hulls of their AC72 catamaran out of the water and foiled not just downwind, but also upwind.
Barker said his team were continually learning about a class of boat that is making its debut in the America's Cup this year.
"We seem to have our modes figured out reasonably well across the range," he said.
"We sort of mucked around at one stage on the upwind. I think it's quite interesting just the way the boat responds to the different conditions."
