RIO DE JANEIRO – Having revived his championship campaign with a clutch victory in Perth, Hannes Arch is a happy man again. The Austrian ace had spent the last month wrestling with the demons inside that were haunting him after his disappointing 11th place in the season opener in Abu Dhabi -- the result of an untimely disqualification that he had trouble swallowing.
But Arch has finally put the Abu Dhabi debacle out of his mind and is focused on moving up further in the championship standings in Rio de Janeiro. The spring is back in his step and the scowl on his face after Abu Dhabi has been replaced with a smile.
“The thing motivating me now is that I found in Perth the right route to take this season,” said Arch, who jumped from 11th to third in the championship on the strength of his triumph in Perth. “I’m not going to worry any more about the championship, or the other pilots. Because I’m still so far behind, my only chance is to just to do the best I can each race and gradually try to catch up. If it works, that’s fine. If not, that’s the way it goes. The closer I get to Paul in the championship, the happier I am. But you can’t force it. The pressure is gone. It’s just me and the flying now. That’s the key this year.”
Arch, who won the 2008 championship after Bonhomme made a costly gaffe near the end of that season that he had dominated until then, knows it is a long year with eight races in total and that there is still plenty of time for him to catch his British rival, who won the 2009 title and leads this year’s championship with 22 points to Arch’s 14. Yet having notched his first win in a year in Perth, Arch managed to stop Bonhomme’s three-race winning streak and put a further element of suspense into the title hunt going to South America.
“Everyone says ‘Paul can still screw up’,” Arch said. “But to be honest, I’d rather be eight points behind Nigel Lamb or Kirby Chambliss than Paul because they make mistakes. Paul doesn’t usually make mistakes. That’s the worst situation. But he did mess up in Porto and London in 2008. He’s just a human being. There’s a lot of stress.”
Indeed, Bonhomme is also hardly infallible. He squandered possible victory in Perth when he made a mistake with one engine setting just before diving into the race track. Arch had his costly blunder in the Top 12 round in Abu Dhabi when he was disqualified for descending ever-so-slightly in a knife-edge position, an infraction that might not always have been enforced in previous years. But it was this year. Arch protested, calling it a normal racing situation. But his appeals fell on deaf ears.
“Everyone says ‘get over it’,” Arch said. “But if you feel it’s not fair, it’s hard to get over it. For three weeks it was bugging me, right up to Perth. It wasn’t until the final training day in Perth that I was enjoying racing again. It took all that time for me to get over it.”
Arch said there had been a lot of pressure on his shoulders to bounce back in Perth and he was overwhelmed with happiness that his comeback succeeded when he needed it most. “I’m not a machine,” he said. “I’m human. There’s a lot of stress out there and you want to win. If I had screwed up again in Perth, it would have been a confirmation for me to complain more. The success in Perth was important.”
Arch, who in 2007 got his best rookie-year result (4th) in Rio, said he is looking forward to South America and remains cautiously optimistic about his title chances this year. His plane appears to be just as fast as Bonhomme’s and Lamb’s at this stage in the season, he said.
“Having one of the fastest planes is the key,” he said. “There’s no way you can win a race against Paul with a slower plane because he’s such a good pilot. I’m surprised that his plane and Nigel’s plane look to be as fast as they are now. Looking at the times and stuff, I think all three of our planes are more or less equal. You look at the TV layovers (video comparisons of their flying) and you can see that I’m not pulling away from them this year. But they’re not pulling away from me either. We’re all equal, which makes it a very interesting race now. Last year I definitely had the fastest plane out there. This year it looks equal so far.”
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