SAILING legend Sir Ben Ainslie’s bid to become the first Brit to skipper an America’s Cup winning team continues this weekend.

Ainslie and his Hampshire-based Land Rover BAR team enter the final World Series event in Japan holding a 14-point lead.

They lead defending champions Oracle Team USA with Emirates Team New Zealand a further three points adrift in third place.

Ainslie helped Team USA win the last America’s Cup in 2013 - when they came from 8-1 down to win 9-8 against New Zealand.

But now he is determined to create British sporting history in a competition began off the Isle of Wight in 1851.

If Ainslie and his Portsmouth-based team win the World Series, Land Rover BAR will take two bonus points into next year’s round robin qualifiers in Bermuda. If they were to end the World Series in second place, they would take one bonus point.

The teams battle it out in Bermuda next summer, with the eventual winner going through to take on the holders.

Ahead of the last event in Fukuoka, any of the top three could still end up winning the World Series.

This is the ninth World Series event, with two of them being staged in Portsmouth. The first one took place in July 2015 - with Ainslie and co winning, as they did when the Series returned to Hampshire in July 2016.

They won the first event thanks to a first and second place in the first day’s racing, before the second day was abandoned due to bad weather. Land Rover had three firsts, two seconds and a fifth place to win the 2016 event.

Ainslie’s crew also won the event in Oman.

Artemis Racing - skippered by Southampton’s Iain Percy - have also won three of the eight events so far, but poor results elsewhere scuppered their chances of taking top spot overall.

Ainslie and co visited the Kokonoe Beya Sumo Stable this week.