The right decisions

My life as a Wing Commander in the Royal Australian Air Force more often than not pays dividends in my current life as a Red Bull Air Race pilot. Precise planning and preparation, mental fortitude and strong teamwork are all things that win races. And for us, months and months of preparation usually comes down to around 55 seconds in a racetrack. Similar timelines for a single bombing run in a modern day fighter.

When it all goes to plan, there is no better feeling. When it doesn’t, the hindsight of what you could have, should have or would have done will keep you awake at night – or on the 14-hour flight home to Australia.

The first race in Abu Dhabi did and didn’t go to plan. We finished fifth, which was a great result and my best finish there since I was second in 2015. On the other hand, there were a few things that popped up throughout our time in the Emirates that threatened to hinder us.

Unfortunately, those hindrances were reflective of the past few months spent preparing for this race season, and meant I needed to draw on much of my experience to get to race one of 2018.

Rewind the clock back to October 2017; we’ve finished the season off with everything looking bright for the year ahead. Our race team have had podiums in the back half of the season, we’ve won qualifying sessions and overall everyone on the team has gelled seamlessly.

We depart each other’s company for a few weeks, and then in late November my race tactician Peter Wezenbeek, technician Ron Simard and I are back together in northern California refining our race plane.

Everything goes well, we improve handling and speed and leave prior to Christmas knowing that we will be damned fast come 2018. Over the break the plane will also go into a paint shop to be stripped and re-painted in new colours.

It’s a big job to re-brand one of these race planes in just a few weeks, but we’re all relatively relaxed that the job will come out well, and that the team will power into 2018.

On December 17, 2017 I have my entire team with me – including those that are part of the Aussie-based Team MHR operation. All that is, except Ron, who is at home with his wife in Panama. We’ve gone out for the afternoon on boat on Lake Macquarie, NSW to celebrate a challenging, and yet rewarding season.

Everything is good.

Three days later that equilibrium is broken when I learn that Ron has had a plane crash in Panama City and sadly lost his life. It’s a shock to the system and no matter how long you’re involved in aviation, this side of it never gets easier.

My primary concern is Ron’s wife, family and then informing my team of this awful news.

As suddenly as that news hit me, there is a part of me that kicks into action and my mind is racing:
We’re three weeks out from our newly painted aircraft needing to be shipped to Abu Dhabi for round one of the season.
Our plan to head back to the USA and re-build the plane, test fly it and then pack it for shipping will need to change.
I will need to find someone to fill Ron’s shoes on the team.

And so the MHR team and I get to work analysing our best course of action. At this stage, there may have been a race scheduled for the end of January, but that won’t be a factor unless we can plan a solution and keep our head on straight to make the right decisions.

As it happens, the best decision for the team is that instead of scrambling to find a race technician with experience and luring them back to the Air Race, the logical fit will be to bring in newly appointed domestic technician David Finch to the racing arm of the business too.

Just like that ‘Finchy’ will be going on the road with us, which is a slight change of pace following 12 dedicated years at the Temora Aviation Museum. With personnel sorted, for me it was back to the USA to tick off a list of items that need attending to, including the build and shipping of my race plane.

It isn’t until I arrive back home, two weeks out from the new race season that the events of the past few weeks sink in. My mind finally shifts back a few gears.

Ron was 72, or 18 with 54 years of experience – as he liked to say – at the time of his death. He was a hard-core racer, had a sharp mind and undoubtedly would be looking down and telling us to get on with the business of racing to win.

So that’s what we aimed for in round one at the beginning of February, even if the best laid plans of the early off-season were slowly starting to unravel.

Our new paint job is heavy; the centre of gravity has moved three per cent towards the tail. The ridges in the paint disturb the airflow, and overall it made the aircraft a handful. It wasn’t the silky smooth machine in Abu Dhabi that it was in 2017.

That’s not an excuse; it’s the cards we had to play with. As intended we put our best foot forward in Abu Dhabi. We arrived with a plan and adapted it as needed. Unfortunately the result wasn’t what we hoped, despite our efforts.

‘That’s not an excuse; it’s the cards we had to play with.’

And so with two months in our pocket before round two of the series in Cannes, France, we left the Middle East with a plan. It’s not a plan that we hope works, but one we are confident will provide solutions.

During my military career I had absolute trust in my colleagues, there’s no option but to have such a mentality. When I watched those serving for the UAE flying past me ahead of that third practice session, I could see the trust they had in each other also.

It’s the same trust I have in my team now. Even when the world outside the cockpit isn’t as it was intended to be.

When a setback or unexpected problem rears its head, a good aviator has a plan, and can calmly analyse the best course of action. The next time I find myself on the Red Bull Air Race start grid preparing for practice three, I have absolute faith that our team will have addressed the deficiencies of race one to improve what we can achieve.

Once again, we’ll fly with the aim of being the best we can with the equipment we have, and the knowledge that we have a strong foundation on which to build our season.