SALZBURG, Austria - It might be virtually impossible to simulate the special demands of a Red Bull Air Race track but that has not stopped many of the pilots and their teams from working hard through the off-season to improve their planes and performance ahead of the 2010 season.
As American Mike Mangold, Austria’s Hannes Arch and Britain’s Paul Bonhomme proved by winning the last three championships, the foundations for a successful campaign are put in place long before the first race even if there is no way to copy the high-speed, low-altitude, high-G race conditions. Mangold, who retired from the Red Bull Air Race at the end of the 2009 season, caught everyone by surprise in 2007 with a series of speed-enhancing modifications to his plane put on over the winter. Arch upset the favourites in 2008 with a savvy strategy and rigorous fitness regime developed in the off-season and Bonhomme claimed the 2009 title thanks in part to extensive aerodynamic work on his plane in the months before the first race of the year in Abu Dhabi.
“I’ve mainly been in the UK and taking things easy this year,” said Bonhomme, the 2009 champion who has won seven of the last 14 races going back to 2008. He said he’ll spend as much time as he can in the off-season with his family this year. “I’ve been enjoying time with Laura, Charlie and Olivia at home as much as possible.”
While many of his rivals have continued training since the final race in Barcelona, Bonhomme said he was taking a break from practice. “We started in January and we’ll work up gently in Arizona to be ready for the first race in March,” he said. Bonhomme said he expects the competition to become even more intense next season, in part because many teams will be using the off-season to improve their planes.
“The technical improvements made over the winter will make a big difference to next year’s results,” he said. “Some teams will get it right and some will fail, as we saw last year. But I think next year will be even tighter result-wise than 2009 was.”
Arch, eager to get back on top in 2010 after his exciting season-long duel with Bonhomme in 2009, said he was working hard on the planning for 2010. “I’ve been spending a lot of time making preparations for the next season, a lot of time in the office,” Arch said. But he said he has also been working on staying top fit - physically and mentally.
American Michael Goulian, who got the first victory of his career in Budapest, said he is eager to get back on the podium as much as possible next year. “Once our plane arrived back in Boston we started a test programme immediately,” Goulian said. “We’ll be flying and testing as much as possible. We’ll try to make an even stronger engine and reduce weight on the plane.”
His compatriot Kirby Chambliss, who won the 2006 championship but finished a disappointing 6th in 2009, would like to start winning races again. He won two in 2008, in Detroit and London.
“There is no such thing as an off-season for our team,” Chambliss said. “We’re working hard to put our team in the position to win next year.” Chambliss lives on an isolated ranch in Arizona that has its own runway. “I do not have a track in my backyard but I can fly as much as I want and I will be ready for the next season.”
Australia’s Matt Hall, a rookie who finished 3rd overall in 2009, will be busy working on his new plane. “During the off-season I’ve been recovering my physical and mental state. It’s been a very busy year, full of travel and stress. I’m also developing my new team so we turn up to the first race with all the lessons learnt from last year, and we’ll be ready to go.”
Hall added: “I hope to be able to do a reasonable amount of training. My new plane is being built in North Carolina and hopefully it’ll be available for most of January and February for training. I also hope to do some training in Australia with my aerobatic plane, working on low flying skills and G-tolerance.”
Nigel Lamb got off to a promising start in 2009 before slumping in mid-season and then rallying with a sterling 2nd place in the season finale in Barcelona that left him with a career-best 6th place overall on 32 points, just four points behind Hall in 3rd place.
“I’ll be based in England and 100-percent focused on doing whatever it takes to make sure our team arrives at the first race in a competitive machine,” Lamb said of his off-season planning. “There won’t be much chance to practice because our MXS-R will be in a deep programme of modifications. I’ll use the MX2 to keep rolling and G-fit but you simply cannot simulate track conditions so we all have to wait for the training phase before the first race.”
Germany’s Matthias Dolderer, who had a red hot second half of his rookie season and his first podium in the finale in Barcelona with third place, is spending much of the off-season in the United States trying to find ways to make the plane faster.
“The plan is to get as much air time as possible to be well-prepared for the next season,” said Dolderer, who was 9th overall. “Especially during the final month before the race, when the plane will be shipped to the first tour stop, I’d like to fly every day to work on my G-resistance. The weather conditions in the western United States should be perfect for that.”
Russia’s Sergey Rakhmanin, another pilot in an MXS-R, is also working through the winter with his team to improve the plane. “There’s a lot of work for the next season that we started even before the last season was over,” he said. “We’ve got a very limited time frame to do all the work that we’ve planned. We’ll be staying in the United States during the winter so there will be quite a lot of travelling. When I’m home in St. Petersburg I plan to work on my fitness with swimming, the gym and skiing. We plane to do a lot of flying in the United States during the winter.”
Alejandro Maclean of Spain will also spend a lot of time in North Carolina working on his MXS-R. “I was looking forward to some time off but after the 2009 season results our plan is to prepare the plane, the engine and myself for 2010,” said Maclean, who had a career-worst 12th place in 2009 after 8th in 2008 and 6th in 2007. “We’ll be in North Carolina for most of the winter, working together with MX and trying to get the most out of our new plane.”
Yoshi Muroya of Japan was a lucky 13th in 2009 and hopes to make into into the top half next year. “I’ll be in New Zealand training and working on modifications,” Muroya said. “It’s summer there. I’ll be in New Zealand until February and do as much training as I can.”
Canada’s Pete McLeod will migrate south to the United States for part of the off-season. “I’ll be in Canada and the United States, working on all aspects of the team, doing some testing,” said McLeod. “I’m also trying to learn how to surf. We’re doing a lot of work on the plane so we won’t be ready for testing until mid-February. I plan to head to the southern U.S. for better weather because it’ll still be winter in Canada.”
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