Hampshire’s Alex Thomson was this afternoon leading the Barcelona World Race.

Along with co-skipper Pepe Ribes, the Gosport sailor was around four nautical miles in front of the chasing pack onboard Hugo Boss.

Before departing on New Year’s Eve, Thomson had outlined his aims of wanting to be at the front of the fleet.

“The pressure is to be at the front of the pack and not lose too much is important,” he said.

“We feel fortunate that we’ve got a boat that can probably catch everybody up if we need to catch everybody up, but we don’t really want to be in that position really.”

At just 26 hours after Wednesday’s 1pm start, the leaders were already 50 miles to the east of Cabo de Gata – the promontory by Almeria which marks the entrance to the Alboran Sea, some 175 miles to Gibraltar and the exit to the Atlantic.

The race record for the 538 miles passage from Barcelona to Gibraltar was set at the start of the 2010-11 edition by Jean-Pierre Dick and Loick Peyron on Virbac-Paprec 3 at three days, 7 hours, 55 mins.

At this afternoon’s position update, Thomson and Ribes had a four-mile advantage over first night leaders Bernard Stamm and Jean Le Cam on Cheminée Poujoulat.