SALZBURG, Austria – With two more teams grounded in the last round of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, the reduced field of just 12 competitors in Windsor was split further as they battled with the tough race course along the Detroit River. It was the 270-degree turn that caused the most unrest but two close calls on the Canadian stop of the eight-race championship divided opinion as the pilots were reminded that there are rarely second chances if things go wrong.
Both, eventual winner Hannes Arch and podium hopeful Matt Hall had tense moments when they suffered wing stalls as they cut their margins too tight in the tricky 270-degree turn at the end of the track as winds wreaked havoc. For Arch, a dramatic pylon hit in training was coupled with a series of stalls. It was definitely a poignant moment for the race teams and caused the hairs to stand up on the back of the necks of many pilots, including the usually unshakable Paul Bonhomme.
Five scares in two seconds
“The secret of this type of flying is to go right up to the limit but not beyond it,” said the defending world champion, who admitted taking it easier in the final training session after seeing Arch’s near miss as the winds changed in the track. “Hannes went to the limit and nudged beyond it. It’s very tempting to go whacking into the track but the wind had got up from the west so I took it easier and my 270 turns were pretty generous. If anyone had seen the video of that they’d have been mad not to have taken it easier. Normally somebody has a scare because they stall, drop a wing or they hit a pylon. He stalled it first, next thing he’s heading towards the pylon and the barge, he manages to pull up from that – that’s two scares. Then he hits the plyon and his spade gets bent off – that’s the third scare – then it rolls uncontrollably to the left and he stalls again trying to recover from that. In one 2-second period, he scares himself five times which scared me, I can tell you.”
Bonhomme was reminded again in Qualifying about the perils of the 270 turn and watched as Australian pilot Hall dipped into the water twice before powering up and out of the track to return to safety. “On my first run I was in the air listening to Matt’s drama and especially after what happened with Hannes, it played on my mind a bit,” added the experienced airline captain, who gave away the single point in Qualifying after holding back and then drifting into the final pylon in the track. “I thought I’d better fly round the track in a disciplined fashion, which I did. I was going towards the finish gate thinking ‘thank goodness that’s over’ and just drifted into the pylon.”
Easy on the aggression
On race day, with Hall’s MXS-R out of action and Japan’s Yoshi Muroya also without a serviceable race plane due to an earlier problem with his canopy, the reduced field of 12 pilots all moved straight into the Top 12. Again we saw Bonhomme carefully assessing the risk of pulling too hard in that tricky turn and he may have held back in the Final 4, giving the win to Arch who was back to his most aggressive flying after the earlier incident.
“If I look at the times maybe I could have been a little bit more aggressive in the 270 turns but I bet Matt and Hannes thought over the week that there's a time not to be too aggressive. That was probably in the back of my mind,” admitted Bonhomme in the post-race press conference. “The only thing I didn’t do was to push harder in the last quarter of the last run, but we’ve seen what happens when you push too hard this week.”
Focused on his own game
Conversely, fellow Brit Nigel Lamb said he had been able to block out both incidents, concentrating on his own flying instead. “I was really going for it, all-out, cutting the margins as fine as I could,” said the pilot, who hit a pylon in the final, narrowly missing out on a podium after scooping the single point in Qualifying. “I wasn’t put off by what had happened with Hannes. When something attention-grabbing happens like that, you’ve got to put it into its box and look at it. I was in the air when Matt was in the track in Qualifying and the Race Directors got me to fly alongside him, to have a look at the belly of the plane and the control systems. I could see it was all fine and the damage only superficial so it was easy to put it out of my mind and just focus on arriving in the track in the right position.”
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