Britain’s Paul Bonhomme was crowned the winner of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship stop at the famous Ascot Racecourse on Sunday, flying brilliantly under pressure in the world’s fastest motorsport series.
It was the second time the Red Bull Air Race was staged in Ascot, just west of London, that has quickly become one of the most attractive air race locations in the world and a favourite of the pilots who relish taking off and landing on the lush green turf in front of the big crowd.
Austria’s Hannes Arch, who struggled in the training session and was last in Qualifying on Saturday, finished a disappointing eighth after winning the last two races in Budapest and Rovinj, Croatia.
Arch had a great run in the Round of 12, just beating Bonhomme, but Bonhomme was the “fastest loser” and advanced to the Round of 8.
Arch was unable to get his engine started before the Round of 8 and was forced to retire. “It’s frustrating if you can’t race but that’s life,” said Arch, who slipped to third overall with 30 points.
In the Red Bull Air Race, which is the official world championship of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), the world’s top pilots hit speeds of 370 km/h while enduring forces of up to 10G as they navigate as precisely as possible through a low-level slalom track marked by 25-metre high air-filled pylons.
The Red Bull Air Race World Championship moves to its next stop to Spielberg, Austria on September 5-6.
Results Ascot:
1. Paul Bonhomme (GBR), 2. Matt Hall (AUS), 3. Yoshihide Muroya (JPN), 4. Nicolas Ivanoff (FRA), 5. Nigel Lamb (GBR), 6. Peter Besenyei (HUN), 7. Martin Sonka (CZE), 8. Hannes Arch (AUT), 9. Michael Goulian (USA), 10. Matthias Dolderer (GER), 11. Juan Velarde (ESP), 12. Kirby Chambliss (USA), 13. Pete McLeod (CAN), 14. François Le Vot (FRA)
World Championship standings:
1. Bonhomme 46 points, 2. Hall 38, 3. Arch 30, 4. Sonka 18, 5. Lamb 17, 6. McLeod 14, 7. Dolderer 12, 8. Muroya 11, 9. Ivanoff 11, 10. Goulian 8, 11. Besenyei 8, 12. Chambliss 2, 13. Velarde, 14. Le Vot
About The Red Bull Air Race…
The Red Bull Air Race World Championship is an international series of races with the participation of at least eight pilots at each race. The objective is to navigate an aerial racetrack featuring air-filled pylons in the fastest possible time incurring as few penalties as possible.
Pilots can win World Championship points at each race and the pilot with the most points after the last race of the season becomes the Red Bull Air Race World Champion.
The Red Bull Air Race consists of the following flying sessions: Training, Qualifying, Round of 14, Round of 8, Final 4. In all sessions, only one pilot races in the track at a time.
TRAINING: Takes place on the days preceding Qualifying Day.
QUALIFYING: Takes place on Qualifying Day, the day before Race Day. It includes two mandatory qualifying sessions. Best time counts. Results of the qualifying session determine the order of racing on Race Day.
ROUND OF 14: Takes place on Race Day. This flying session is completed in head-to-head heats; the seven winners plus the fastest loser move forward to the Round of 8. The head-to-head pairings are based on the qualifying session results.
ROUND OF 8: Seven winners from the Round of 14, plus the fastest loser, race in head-to-head heats again. The four winning pilots advance to the Final 4. For the losing pilots, their time in the Round of 8 will determine 5th to 8th place race positions.
FINAL 4: Four fastest from the Round of 8 compete in the Final 4 for 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th place race positions. The slowest winning pilot from the Round of 8 will fly first in the Final Four. They race individually and victory is based on the quickest time recorded for the session.
STARTING ORDER FOR FLYING SESSIONS
The starting order is the order in which the pilots will race in each flying session. The starting order for Training is defined by the results of the current Red Bull Air Race World Championship standing. The highest ranking pilot starts first, new pilots start at the end. If there is more than one new pilot, the starting order of these new pilots is determined by a draw.
The starting order for all sessions on Race Day is determined by the results in Qualifying. The order is reversed so that the slowest pilot from Qualifying starts first.
RACE WINNER
The winner is the pilot who is ranked number one in the final flying session.
RED BULL AIR RACE WORLD CHAMPION
The Red Bull Air Race World Champion is the pilot who achieves the highest aggregate score in the given Red Bull Air Race World Championship season.
The winner is crowned Red Bull Air Race World Champion at the last stop in the World Championship.
Red – outbound lap, Grey – return lap
The Ascot crowds were treated to breath-taking displays by an Apache Gunship – a four-blade, twin-turboshaft attack helicopter and a Chinook – a twin-engine, tandem rotor heavy-lift helicopter, its primary role being troop movement, artillery placement and battlefield resupply.
One of the world’s leading paraglider aerobatics pilots, Pal Takats, took to the air, wowing the Ascot audience with a vast selection of tricks and stunts.
Pal is a Red Bull show regular and if you get a chance to see him in action… grab it!
The Breitling Wingwalkers, the world’s only formation wing-walking team, displayed astounding sequences of loops, rolls and turns whilst wingwalkers waved and performed handstands against 150mph wind pressure… even releasing themselves from their cradles and sitting on the wings whilst the aircraft were still in flight! 
Behind the scenes…
During the media hangar walk, I spent some time with the Master Class pilots ahead of the race final…
PAUL BONHOMME…
I’ve just been talking to your team about conditions, is there a possibility we’ll see a couple of seconds disappearing from qualifying times achieved yesterday?
It could be, yes, I think the wind is forecast to get up a little bit but not as strong as yesterday, so it could be a bit faster.
I’m in my early 50’s and so are you, but when you think of sport at the highest level, it’s driven by youth, sport is dominated by youth and yet this is a high-level sport, there’s of factors to consider like G-force, how do you keep fit to withstand such impact?
I think, for this, the main fitness factor is not really the flying, although you do have to be fit for flying, but it’s the length of days and the other bits. Having said that, the G-force is the main physical drain on us, if you like, and for me, I just go for general fitness… cycling, I don’t run, I don’t think that’s good for my lower back, but cycling, a bit of walking, maybe a bit on the rowing machine. But you don’t have to be Charles Atlas, you don’t have to work out in the gym, but good general fitness.
And when you think of older sportsmen and women, typically, they excel in a less physical type of activity, but amazingly, the age range of the competitors in the Red Bull Air Race is higher than average and the physical impact is more intensive on the body, to say the least…
Yes, and a lot of people say “Why are there a load of old farts here?” (laughs) and I think the main reason is, you can’t learn to fly until you’re 16, 17 or 18 anyway and then if you look at the cost of flying, you’re not going to be able to get into this sort of machine until your late 20’s, probably, it depends on your circumstances. So that’s why you’ve got a more mature bunch here, whereas if you look at motor-racing, you can get in a go-kart when you’re three and by the time you’re 18, you’ve got 15 years of race experience so you’re good enough to go out and mess about in the big leagues.
Just touching on finances, we can see that the publicity surrounding the Red Bull Air Race is building, more media coverage, what does it cost to run a team like this for a year… ballpark?
Ballpark… it’s impossible to say, where do you start? When I bought my first aeroplane, somebody said to me “Whatever you do, don’t work out how much it costs an hour” and I think that’s a very wise thing. I suspect the same would go for horse-owners, if you actually sat down and worked out how much it cost to own a racehorse, you’d probably give up there and then.
Is it easier now to get sponsorship?
It is, it’s a major factor in this series that it needs more sponsors, for this sport to go forward, it needs sponsors to come in. There’s the Red Bull factor there, a lot of people, I think, think Red Bull is such a dominant brand, they’re going to get swamped by the Red Bull brand, so there’s all sorts of ideas being bandied around, whether any of them will ever happen or not, I’m not sure, but for certain, we do need more sponsors.
We covered the Monaco F1 Grand Prix and that was one of the questions that came up, their whole branding is perhaps not quite as it should be, it’s starting to lax in some way, people are starting to lose the momentum of F1, whereas we can see that Red Bull Air Race and the marketing machine is gradually building. So it’s quite a fine line in keeping that balance of building up a brand, building up a whole race image and not knocking it like, perhaps, is happening in F1.
Yes, it’s not easy, but the analogy that I use is it’s ‘starting a sport’… this is now twelve years old now, I reckon you need to be a bit like a new coffee shop, you need to put a sandwich board outside saying ‘cheap sponsorship this week – come on in’ get people in, get them interested, get them tickled and then when it’s built, then you say ‘look, this is actually costing us more than we’re charging you so we need to up the ante’. I don’t think that’s happening at the moment, I think the price is still a bit too high and I know if I was running it, I’d get a load of big people in and get them tickled, get their interest tickled and then, hopefully, it would take off.
HANNES ARCH…
So, yesterday, (qualifying), disappointing with the DNS (withdrawal due to technical issues), how are you feeling today, especially with the conditions… are they good for you or is it just a little bit too good?
No, actually, I’m feeling strong, I don’t know why but it’s just a good day today, no matter what happens.
Mentally, you’re in the right place.
Yes, I’m going in there and, to be honest, I’m not racing against Paul today, I’m racing against myself, so that’s a little bit my task. Also to not getting distracted too much by all the talking and everything. The only bitter thing for us is… and I’m talking for Paul and me, that we both know one of us two is not in the final because of this stupid system. And that’s frustrating because… just imagine, both of us are really fast out there and you can’t be in the final, that’s not cool, you know so I hope that the organisation thinks about that because it’s so hard to communicate, it should be raised now. Instead of asking the guys who are doing it, living it, the passion, you know, for the sport.
I asked Paul about his fitness regime… what’s yours?
Sport. I love sport, I’m living in Salzburg in Austria where it’s just the right place to do sport, you’ve got the mountains, the lakes, biking, mountain biking.
A lot of sportsmen, at a high level, aren’t just good at their specialised sport, if you talk to a F1 driver, some of them have turned round and said “Well, I was going to be a professional footballer, but I did this instead”… what would you have done had you not become a pilot?
Actually, I can’t tell you because I did already four different sports at a high level sponsored by Red Bull so I just go with the flow. This fits exactly to my age right now, you know, what I did before, I was base jumping, paragliding, I also did world tours all over the world and mountain climbing at the highest level. I think I am done now, after this, I could imagine to enjoy just living without the pressure of always trying to be the best. (Laughs).
NIGEL LAMB…
So conditions good today for slicing a few seconds off the best times?
Oh my God, yes, I’m miles behind! I won qualification here last year and then went on to come second so yes, a big disappointment for you and me yesterday, way off the pace but yes, I can catch some of it, for sure, I’m sure of that but lots of work to do today. Conditions are maybe too good.
You think they’re too good?
It was all blustery last year so the track is very benign so everyone is going to be really quick.
Just looking at the track, it’s a superb venue, as opposed to previous UK venues, this is much, much better.
Oh, it’s unquestionable, yes, we did love Longleat, from a piloting perspective, we like Longleat because it was even more three-dimensional so you had everything that’s here but also sloping ground so you were up and down and in and out of trees, so that was nice, but flawed in many other respects. Here, you’ve got the start in front of the crowd and it’s very special and everything is lower so this is the best.
And also the team and hangar areas are closer to the track…
Yes, for sure, everything here is really, really good, it’s fantastic, this is one of the two good tracks of the season and the other one is Spielberg in Austria, which is similar because everything takes place in front of the crowd. There are two like that in America but they’re not so pretty, they’re not green and full of trees, they’re ‘concretey’ and full of rocks.
So a track like that from a pilot’s perspective?
It doesn’t make much difference from our perspective but it’s from an aesthetically-pleasing perspective.
I’ve been talking to Paul about the marketing and branding of the race. F1 has reached a peak and it’s now starting to wane, there needs to be a new injection of thought, new ideas coming to really vamp up the image. Whereas the Red Bull Air Race is raising its profile…
Yes, well I think it’s much easier with a new sport. The Air Race has been going since 2004… 2005 was when it really took off, I would say, but yes, I’ve been following the fortunes of F1, I guess they have much bigger challenges and it’s much more complicated. The advantage to having a high-profile sport will be that the appeal grows, then more money comes in and then you can do more. And they are probably more able to change, there are some things in F1 that are a lot simpler than ours, you think of the infrastructure and the challenges of the Red Bull Air Race, you’ve got to set up a track somewhere. But the good thing about that is, when you find the right location, you can take a track right into a location like this, so you’re not bound by having the track… but when you have that infrastructure of the track, everything is there once you get there, so the challenges, once you’re there, are much easier. That’s complicated but this is a sport with a different appeal, I think.
I’ve been talking to the other Master Class pilots about fitness regimes, especially when you’re an older competitor. The world of sport is normally dominated by youth, this appears to be an exception.
Well, two answers. The reason that everyone is older is that you can’t jump in an aeroplane aged six years old, so just as when watch a camera-ed up car going through Monaco and how close they’re putting it to hard obstacles, the fences, the kerbs, for me, it’s awesome. It commands such amazing respect but I do understand it, I understand it, it’s such a connection with the machine that actually, just like as we strap wings on our back, they’re just making their body mobile. And it’s the same with us, you have to be at a level where you don’t even spend one millisecond thinking about what you’re doing with the controls, you’ve just got the means to elevate your body into the air and then putting yourself through the lines. And in aviation, you can start at 18 and then the path is much more difficult. One of my sons is into go-karting and you can take a kid at five years old and you put them in a little go-kart and it’s very, very simple because there’s tracks everywhere, there are go-karts, it can be relatively inexpensive at first. And look at Verstappen (Formula One), he is 17 years old, but I get it, he’s done it since he was five, he’s got a father who is an ex-Formula One driver, so he’s got 12 years and many thousands of pounds. Because you can sit in a go-kart, in the wet and dry, night and day, and hone the skills to be able to have it as an extension of your body, whereas, in aviation, that takes until… I would say, actually, I don’t think you could do it before you’re 30 really, I know Pete McLeod came in at 25, but you just need that level of experience, that’s important. But secondly, you’ve got to keep fit, you’ve got to take great care of your back, your core and your neck, so that’s what I work on, and you need to be relatively aerobically-fit, but very G-fit and that comes with spending time in the cockpit. There’s no machine, other than a centrifuge, which is horrible, a centrifuge is not like an aeroplane at all because you’ve got all sorts of vestibular problems with the way the gimbals work so it’s not like flying an aeroplane. But you learn the technique of anti-G, of combating G, in an aeroplane and you need a lot of time and you need a lot of experience to make that reflex. But here, we have to focus really hard on it for gate number two because you’re not warmed up, you need to get the circulation going and that’s the first pull and it’s not the highest G, it’s only probably 8 or something. You’ve got to be ready for that one, that’s the one you think about a bit in this track but the rest is kind of pretty instinctive.
Celebrities in attendance included presenter, Charlie Webster, Lucy Watson and James Dunmore, Diana Vickers and Rannvijay Singh, along with Sophie Ellis-Bextor and Richard Jones
