Red Bull Air Racing storms Perth

This year’s race saw a course set with closer turns than last year. As British Red Bull racer Steve Jones told AA before the event, “there just aren’t any straights this year, there is nothing but turns. ” This meant careful energy management would be the key to the best times. This played out during the races on Sunday when Jones had a bit of a ‘G stall’ pulling into the inverted Cuban out of gate four and lost two seconds in one manoeuvre.

Last year’s event saw a crowd of around 300,000 witness Peter Besenyei win the event and Kirby Chambliss crowned World Red

British Red Bull racer Steve Jones said “there just aren’t any straights this year, there is nothing but turns. ”

Bull Air Race Champion. This year organisers were expecting another 100,000 spectators to attend the racing. An advertising campaign in all states had been carried out from early in 2007 and hopes were high for growing numbers so as to keep an Australian location in the Red Bull air circus.

On the weekend ‘only’ some 200,000 spectators witnessed an amazing weekend of flying, the public viewing from both the northern shore of the Swan River and from Sir James Mitchell Park on the southern shore.

The race itself was supported by other flying activities such as a three ship formation of Nanchangs from Fighter Combat International at Jandakot carrying out a mock ‘dogfight’, and an aerobatics display by a T-6 Harvard both on its own and later in a pair with a Christian Eagle. One of the most graceful flying displays was an aerobatic aerial ballet by Australian Aviation’s Bob Grimstead in his RF4D Fournier powered glider Blue Angel.

The display that sent a number of spectators scrambling for their cameras on Sunday was the flypast of a Qantas 767-300 resplendent in the airline’s new livery. The aircraft performed three passes from a slow speed ‘dirty’ configuration to a 300kt pass resulting in a high nose attitude pitch up goround over the Narrows Bridge – the sort of thing not normally seen from an aircraft of this size. After watching the small Red Bull racers, the 767 looked so slow but in reality it was travelling much faster.

Maybe crowds were kept away by the quite strong cool easterly winds that plagued the area on the final three days of practice, qualifying, elimination and final heats.

Vantage points along the southern shore had been closely protected by some spectators from very early in the morning. These same breezes kept the pilots guessing with times continually changing as conditions became fluky with subtle gusts affecting each pass differently. A number of pilots expressed their inability to explain the differing times except for maybe the differing winds.

From a spectator standpoint, this was obvious with the difference to the turn radii out of some gates as compared to the previous lap. It also made for some interesting viewing when a gust of wind would occasionally carry an aircraft into a gate pylon. The usual casualties were the leeward pylons of the start/finish line (gate one) and the four way ‘quadro’ pylons (gates six and seven), with the most interesting perpetrator being the Red Bull BO 105 camera helicopter, which clipped the windward pylon of the start/finish gate while showing off the course to the spectators on the big screens scattered around the area on the final day. It was the only pylon to suffer a hit on the final day.

Going into this last round of the series, the organisers couldn’t have wished for a better scenario. The two contenders for the world champion crown were pitted against one another in the same pairing, with the victor taking the final spoils. Well almost! The rule book and some mathematical probabilities had to be consulted for the combinations and permutations that resulted during the day.

Why? This year’s series had seen the introduction of a new format for races to increase the spectacle to the public. The format was not completely popular with some of the pilots, as was expressed at the post race

The two contenders for the world champion crown were pitted against one another in the same pairing, with the victor taking the final spoils. Well almost! ”

press conference. This format, possibly including some new gate types, is still being evaluated for next year as the organisers of the ‘World’s fastest form of motorsport’ try to bring the event to a larger public audience. Another change under consideration is the use of a single aircraft type so that pilots are competing on skill alone.

The only two competitors who could win the overall championship this year, Britain’s Paul Bonhomme (Team Matador) and the USA’s Mike Mangold (Team Cobra) both entered the Perth round with confidence. But only one could win. Mangold, the ex-military fighter pilot, had the experience of having won the championship in 2005 and Bonhomme, a British Airways 747 Captain, was yet to win his first world championship. Most saw Bonhomme as favourite for the title.

Changes to this year’s format meant that instead of pilots racing against the clock over the final day in two rounds, they first had to qualify to fly on the final race day. Only the 12 fastest pilots from qualifying on Saturday would make it to Sunday’s final fly-off. Out of the original start list of 13 pilots, Team Lobo’s Klaus Shrodt didn’t get to fly on Sunday after putting in a poor time which allowed Holland’s Frank Versteegh to survive for the Sunday after incurring the only penalty in qualifying for flying too high. Peter Besenyei qualified fastest with a snappy 1:14. 55, a clear half a second ahead of second place qualifier Kirby Chambliss and over 11 seconds (eight seconds without the height penalties) from 12th qualifier Versteegh.

The first elimination heat on Sunday would see the four slowest times eliminated. After suffering the flu for most of the weekend, Team Lobo’s remaining pilot, Frank Versteegh, was the slowest. He was followed out by Russia’s Sergey Rakhmanin (Team Dragon), Paul Bonhomme’s team-mate Steve Jones, Austria’s Hannes Arch (Team Cobra) and Britain’s Nigel Lamb (Team Breitling).

This left quarter finals of eight pilots in four pairs, the winner of each proceeding to the semis and then the final. A consolation final would decide third and fourth places. The pairings are organised so that the slowest pilot flies against the fastest and so on until there are four quarter final heats.

This new format meant that pilots proceeding on to the finals could fly up to four times on the final day, compared to twice in previous years. As Red Bull’s aviation manager Heinz Moeller noted, “it’s going to be a tremendous challenge for our pilots. ” It seemed to be the case with quick turn-arounds being carried out with pilots back in the air within minutes of the contenders for the next heat being decided.

Coming into this round, Paul Bonhomme was ‘Mr Consistent’, having finished on the podium in every round (and also the only pilot not to have collided with a pylon for the year).

The pressure was on in Perth’s fickle wind conditions.

Both Bonhomme and Mangold had three wins in individual rounds under their belt for the series with the overall series lead see-sawing between the two three times. The margin leading into this round was just two points. Perth was therefore flagged as ‘D-Day in Oz’.

The drama was played out on the final day with both contenders coming head to head in the quarter finals as the two had finished in eighth (Bonhomme) and tenth (Mangold) fastest times in the elimination round. This was in contrast to the qualifying round the day before where Mangold had headed off Bonhomme with a 1 second margin.

Mangold was third and Bonhomme, fifth. The crowd awaited heat two of the quarter finals with bated breath as it was seen as being the race of the day.

At the beginning of the final day, all Bonhomme had to do to win the overall championship was to reach the finals. This would assure him of sufficient points to prevent Mangold from winning overall.

However, in the elimination round both pilots appeared to suffer a little with nerves and didn’t put in their bestperformances compared to the previous day’s qualifying.

As a result the organisers got what they wanted, a head-to-head clash between the two championship contenders, but not quite to script with the two meeting in heat two of the quarters instead of the semifinal or final.

When Bonhomme went first and put in a 1:17. 14 r un, an excellent time for the conditions, everybody held their breath to see what Mangold could do. Both pilots were flying Edge 540s but Mangold’s has slightly curved up wingtips to improve roll rate.

Mangold’s run started well but half way through was nearly half a second behind Bonhomme. Everybody thought that this was it, but Mangold pulled off a blistering second half to record 1:16. 44 seconds, both pilots having incurred no penalties. This meant Mangold was through to the semifinal. A vast majority of the crowd sighed at Bonhomme’s shock loss when it looked as though he had it in the bag.

The on-course commentators then told the crowd that after referring to the rules they found that there was still a possibility that Bonhomme could win the championship. This required Mangold to be beaten in the semifinals and then losing the consolation final. A very low probability, but possible considering the conditions and pressure.

This meant that he had to be beaten by first Nicholas Ivanoff in the semifinal and then by the runner-up out of USA’s Michael Goulian and Spain’s Alejandro Maclean in the consolation final. When Ivanoff put in a blistering run in beating Mangold by nearly three seconds, the Briton was relegated to the consolation final. It wasn’t over just yet though! Goulian ended up winning his semifinal against Alejandro Maclean.

Mangold would now meet Maclean in the consolation final.

This meant that Mangold would have to be beaten by Maclean to lose the championship. The consolation now became the final for the world championship.

The crowd only had a short time to wait.

Going on previous performances, it was thought that Maclean would have a difficult task ahead of him as Mangold had been very consistent during the series, finishing on the podium eight times out of nine events, while the Spaniard had finished in the points only on three occasions, with his best being two fourth place finishes.

Unfortunately Maclean incurred two height penalties, with a total of six seconds being added to his time, which was still two seconds slower than Mangold’s creditable 1:18. 24. Mangold was handed the world championship and displayed his joy in putting on an impromptu aerobatics display (as Maclean had already flown).

The final was now between Michael Goulian (Team Dragon) in his Edge 40 and Nicholas Ivanoff (Team MRT) also in an Edge 540. Ivanoff went on to win by three seconds from Goulian, claiming the Perth round.

So in somewhat dramatic circumstances Mike Mangold could celebrate his world championship win from Paul Bonhomme, with Peter Besenyei coming third.

In the teams event, even though Steve Jones had been eliminated so early in the day, Team Matador still had enough points to take the prize from second placed Team Red Bull of Kirby Chambliss and Peter Besenyei and third placed Team Cobra of Mike Mangold and rookie Hannes Arch.

Edge 540s predominated this year with a total of 10 competing, with one Extra 300S, one Extra 300SR (modified for racing) and a lone MX2 rounding out the 2007 fleet.

Is this the future of motorsport? Fast and dramatic, the Perth crowd and anybody connected with aviation certainly hope so. Roll on Perth 2008. o