VIENNA, Austria - Two races into the 2009 Red Bull Air Race season and Nicolas Ivanoff has been the fastest man flying. As a proven race winner his talents have never been in doubt, but the switch to an Edge 540 seems to have made the Quick Frenchman ultra-competitive. Is the plane the thing? Team Ivanoff answer the question.
Sometimes the real story isn’t the one that gets reported. In Abu Dhabi, for the first Red Bull Air Race of the 2009 season, Hannes Arch narrowly beat Paul Bonhomme. It was a continuation of the title battle from the previous year; the Austrian and the Englishman fighting tooth and claw for air superiority. On the ground, the battle between technicians Vito Wyprächtiger and Wade Hammond provided the sub-plot. In a winter of frenzied development and testing, the Edge 540 race planes of both pilots had undergone serious modification: one concentrating on weight reduction, the other on improved aerodynamics. Abu Dhabi didn’t settle the argument, the times all weekend too close to suggest any particular dominance for either direction. Instead, they served to prolong the discussion. They also hid the fact that Nicolas Ivanoff, though finishing third, had on raw pace been the fastest man in the air. Penalties in each round served to conceal that in reality no one could get close to the orange blur of the mercurial Frenchman’s plane.
The next race, in San Diego, produced more of the same – only Ivanoff was avoiding the penalties. In the Final 4 he flew clean and flew well to record his second race victory and his first since Perth 2007. “We always knew Nicolas would be fast when he got into a decent plane,” said one of his neighbouring pilots on the Red Bull Air Race Airport, alluding to the fact that after struggling with an Extra 300SR in 2008, Ivanoff is now competing with an Edge 540 of his own.
"The Edge 540 is different"
With hindsight, it looks like an intelligent tactical move, though Ivanoff is quick to point out that the new rules precluded him from continuing with the asymmetrical-winged Extra. “The Edge really is very different,” reflects Nicolas. “The Extra was a prototype for the Red Bull Air Race. It had some good qualities but also a lot of… mistakes. With the Edge it was nice to get into something that was instantly very good on a racetrack. The Extra made it hard to do a fast roll and the plane was almost unflyable when the weather was windy and bumpy. When you fly somewhere like San Diego and you come into the downtown area, it isn’t likely to be smooth. Last year it was hard for me to have a good time; now, when I’m flying the Edge, I hear other pilots saying, ‘It’s really bumpy today.’ I think: ‘Where?’ I can’t feel the wind any more: the plane is very stable.”
Short season preparation in Oklahoma City
Unlike the teams of rivals Bonhomme and Arch, Ivanoff hasn’t had a winter to prepare his plane. In fact, taking delivery shortly before the season began, the Frenchman had barely five hours’ flight time before arriving in Abu Dhabi. “We had one week in the Zivko factory in Oklahoma City,” recounts Nicolas. “We went to the factory on Monday; I was able to fly the plane on Thursday afternoon and on Friday we started to disassemble the plane, to ship it to Abu Dhabi. We didn’t have time to do anything other than run-up the engine.” An enquiry of how his plane happens to be quite so quick elicits only a smile and a shrug. “I know nothing about the plane. If the plane it fast, it’s due to Bruno. For that you really have to ask him.”
Team Ivanoff technician Bruno Marlière had very little sleep during the warm-up week before the Abu Dhabi race. “We did a few things that have proved good enough in giving us some speed. The Lycoming engine is really easy to work with – there’s lots of potential to adapt the settings, and I was lucky to find good ones in a short period of time.”
Modifications postponed
Zivko’s Edge 540 makes up the bulk of the race field and has a formidable reputation in competition aerobatics; but constructing aircraft isn’t a mass-production activity; rarely will two planes the same roll out of the factory; consequently the oldest Edge in the Red Bull Air Race, that of Pete McLeod, is somewhat different to the latest edition owned by Ivanoff – though the pilot stresses that the variations are not that great. “I don’t think there is much difference between the new Edges and the older ones,” he says. “The set-up of the [now removable] wingtips has changed, and we asked the factory to give us a plane with the minimum weight they could do; so we probably have one of the lightest – unmodified – planes, but beyond that… well, the colour is different.
“We didn’t have time to think about factory modifications. Also, I didn’t have the knowledge to suggest any because I didn’t know the plane. I was not in a position to decide what would be good and what would be bad. Now, knowing the plane a little bit better, we can do things to it ourselves. I imagine we will work on areas such as the wheel fairings, the landing gear, maybe the coaming also.”
Team Ivanoff tried to fit a more aerodynamic canopy between the Middle East and Californian races, but that project didn’t work out and the team chose not to devote excessive time to remedying the situation. The one notable change from the plane that left the factory is a new, lighter exhaust system, developed by a French supplier usually linked with developing components for Formula One cars. The team have no major revisions due for this weekend, preferring to wait until after this race. “We will have more time when we are back in Europe, when we can work from our home base,” says Nicolas. “Unlike the [North] American pilots, it’s really hard for us to do modifications out here.
“Another factor to consider is that this is a new plane. We have to run it for a while to work out what we need to do. There are modifications that we could have done quickly, but that comes with a risk. It’s better to run it for two or three races, take our time and figure out what we really need, and then do those things well. We have to fly the plane to understand it; we have to learn about the aircraft, find out what it likes, what it doesn’t like and make changes that really work. I don’t want to make minor changes; I prefer to take more time and do something real.”
Fast, light and manoeuvrable
Given the apparent superiority of Ivanoff and his Edge at the moment, the Frenchman might be forgiven for choosing to change nothing at all. He seems to have a balance of speed and handling that works, and Bruno in particular is wary of upsetting that equilibrium. “You must always think about the global level of performance. You need to be fast, you need to be light, you need to be manoeuvrable. It’s like a spider [Venn] diagram; you need to stay in the middle. Imagine if we have a good idea for the engine. If that improvement adds three kilograms, we must find three kilograms from somewhere else on the plane. It’s easy to say, difficult to do, but you have to stay in the middle.”
“Basically we need everything,” adds Nicolas. “In this kind of flying we need a strong plane that’s very manoeuvrable, but also fast and lightweight. It isn’t like a race plane set-up for huge turns like maybe you see at Reno. Think of those as being like a car that is fast on the highway. For the Red Bull Air Race we need the equivalent of a car that is fast on tight, twisty mountain roads.”
All-carbon-fibre MXS-R versus Edge 540
Despite the stranglehold the Edges have on the podium places so far in 2009, there have been flashes of performance from the competitor MXS-R aircraft also, suggesting the Edge 540 isn’t going to enjoy its previous hegemony. The all-carbon-fibre planes from MX Aircraft, as flown by Peter Besenyei, Matt Hall, Nigel Lamb, Alejandro Maclean and Sergey Rakhmanin, are light, nimble and capable of great speed – but as Bruno Marlière points out, outright
speed between the air gates isn’t the only factor to take into consideration over a gruelling season.
“There are advantages for the MXS for sure. It’s a nice smooth machine with good curves and of course it’s really, really fast. But an Edge can be fast also, and if you have an Edge you can think about configuration more; with an MXS you can’t change the shape too much because the skin is also the structure.
“Speaking purely from the technical point of view, I have a better feeling with the Edge because it is steel tubing and so we can repair it easily. You don’t need to be completely involved in carbon-fibre engineering and design. I think if you have trouble with an MXS, you often have to be an expert in carbon fibre to fix it. On this Edge, if you have a hard landing, for example, and need to carry out an inspection, it’s easy to examine the steel tubing.”
Sometimes the real story isn't the one you hear
The mix of Ivanoff’s effusive élan and the Edge’s sheer competence were always expected to be a potent combination, but quite how quickly the Frenchman has got to grips with new aircraft has raised some eyebrows out in the pitlane, including those of Ivanoff himself. Like any race pilot he has the confidence to back himself, but there is a difference between the self-belief to fly well and an empirical expectation of victory. “I saw the modifications of Paul [Bonhomme] and Hannes [Arch] and suspected they would be very fast. I didn’t have any expectations for us because I didn’t know the plane, it was still so new,” he says.
Both Nicolas and Bruno believe there is greater potential in their plane, waiting to be teased out as they familiarize themselves with it’s quirks and foibles. They’re certain, for example, that the engine has more horsepower waiting to be tapped. The Red Bull Air Race doesn’t tend to engage in the technological PR phoney war so beloved of other motorsports, but it’s a claim that will give the competition pause for thought.
Of course, Ivanoff being quick with the plane straight out of the wrapper suggests the real worry should be that the Frenchman in the orange scarf with matching plane is motivated and flying beautifully – but sometimes the real story isn’t the one you hear.
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