The comparison of the 6 wheel Tyrrell / ground skirt / and perhaps active suspension F1 cars to F1 cars not so equipped represents a smaller technology gap than theoretically what existed between KZ1 and the Conner's catamaran. The original America's Cup boats were 12 meter class boats. 12 m boats are / were displacement hulls and all displacement hulls have a theoretical upper speed limit established by the waterline length of the hull. You can add all the sail area you want; but, at some point you hit a wall. Most of the fiddling in the 12 m class occurred below the waterline with winged keels and drag reduction stuff eking out smallish improvements in performance. KZ1 kind of severely stretched the understanding of the rules by ditching the 12 m waterline length and going for a monster long keel boat. The longer hull length (and a bunch more sail area) gave them a theoretically higher top speed compared to the old class of boats; but, it was still limited by the physical constraints of a displacement hull.
I don't purport to know what was going on in Dennis Conner's head at the time; but, I expect that he knew that trying to outKZ1 with something longer than KZ1 was going to be mind buggeringly expensive and difficult given the development time. So he did a complete technology change to the catamaran which doesn't suffer from the same displacement induced wave drag problem that limits displacement hulls like KZ1. My recollection from the events was that the Kiwis knew that they were pretty much screwed. Aside from the legal challenge, the Kiwi strategy seemed to consist of trying to blanket (wind shadow) the catamaran from the start line so that it couldn't fly a hull, or hope for light wind conditions where the cat could not fly a hull and the KZ1 sail area played to their advantage. The KZ1 was a huge boat that made the cat look somewhat puny and cast a similarly huge shadow. If the cat was able to stay clear of KZ1 or the wind was good and they could fly a hull I think the race was pretty much over and the Kiwi's could pretty much head for the bar and some Steiny's.
I think that the comparison might be that with KZ1 compared to the old 12m class, the Kiwi's brought a Tyrell 6 wheeler to the race. Conner brought a jet powered land speed record car to the race (which is more like an airplane that doesn't leave the ground). Just to extend the aircraft analogy, with the hydrofoils the latest boats have completely exited the displacement drag regimen and are truly flying through the water where the lift and drag and foil stuff are generally governed by the same equations as for aircraft.
The America's Cup and the high $ always makes for interesting drama. It is always interesting to watch people spend money and try new stuff. My personal opinion is that it generally does not make for interesting racing if you are watching the race. Class racing is more interesting. I used to race Lasers and Hobbies. I never participated at the World's level; but, I know that at that level after every race the competitors rotated boats. They could adjust stuff on the boat to their liking before the race; but, that was pretty much it. Some people don't like that type of racing because it is pretty hard to blame non performance on a poor boat.