When the heat is on …

And yet here we are, gunning for the title of world champion in an environment that is every part as thrilling as it can be fragile.

As I write this column, I am on my way home from the first race of the 2019 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in Abu Dhabi. On paper, the result wasn’t what we were after. A fifth place is nothing to be overly upset with and puts us on par with where we finished race one 12 months ago. Remember, that year we almost stole the title from Czech pilot Martin Šonka, so things are looking up.

On race day we had a team operating to the best of its ability. The plane was handling well and I was really pleased with my flying. Unfortunately, we had one engine cylinder running much hotter than others which affected our power.

We put our heads together as a team to try and solve the issue pre-race, but inevitably had to come up with an alternate strategy to work around the issue. Even so, we almost made the Final Four so kudos to the whole team for delivering a top result when the odds were against us.

Our circumstances in Abu Dhabi exemplify the stringent limits we’re flying within when racing. They also represent aviation in general. We had prepared everything for race day to a T; we did everything we could to prepare a safe and fast plane and then an unexpected variable popped up. In fact, come race day we had a serious discussion about whether or not it was safe to fly. We worked with the air race engine-supplier Lycoming and determined that it was safe for me to be in the air.

Had it not been safe, we would have pulled the pin on race one. No matter how competitive we are, we don’t race to take risks. We race on the limit but never over it, and this leads into the role that I have with QBE Insurance as an ambassador to their Airmanship program.

Airmanship is more than having a safe plane. It is about continually increasing knowledge of the aircraft you’re flying and the environment that you fly in. It also promotes pilots to continually increase their general level of expertise. This isn’t a sponsor plug, but a chance for me to talk about a program that I truly believe makes the air a safer environment for all pilots – especially we race pilots who are flying to the nth degree.

‘Where most people see risks … I see precision.’

Where most people see the risks associated with being a race pilot, I see precision, exacting engineering and an environment where no stone is left unturned. The best flights I have during a race are when my Edge 540 V3 racer feels like an extension of myself. They’re the ones where the 0.03 seconds it takes to get to 10G feels like a slowly measured timeline where I am in total control.

It’s those moments where I feel totally at ease in an environment that can be so overwhelming fast and violent, that I remind myself that the true threat is complacency. Yes, I am flying fast, I am flying low, and I do these things regularly. Oddly, it’s normal. But you can quickly become too at ease when something becomes normal, and that is when our sport could potentially become dangerous.

In our situation on race day, we weren’t complacent about our ability to work around a problem, or my ability to respond to a potential in-air issue that could have occurred due to a problem. We had to check every box and be beyond satisfied that the plane was ready to fly to the limit.

The plane I fly is one of the lightest, most manoeuvrable and responsive on the planet. It’s licenced as an ‘experimental’ aircraft and we are always modifying it to go faster, turn tighter or pull up harder. Around every flying session at a Red Bull Air Race we brief, debrief and analyse what is happening in the plane. There is never a moment that I don’t step into the cockpit without having pored over every piece of information that will help me be the safest pilot I can be in the track … while also eking out every thousandth of a second that will make me faster than my competitors.

Our attention to detail is second to none. Airmanship for us begins by studying every facet of the physical environment that I race in, from the weather to the physical formation of the land beneath me and the slalom-style track we race in. It continues with knowing every detail of the aircraft and always flying with a plan, not on a whim.

While the Red Bull Air Race represents the extreme of aviation, it also exemplifies a best practice that every pilot should follow. I know the continued attention to detail we show at a race translates to the lessons Matt Hall, the regular GA pilot, employs when he’s back home.

Complacency, whether at high speed and low level or low speed and high level, is what we as pilots should all be wary of.

Race day in the United Arab Emirates was a hiccup on our way to fighting for the world championship. The issue wasn’t planned, but everything else was. It allowed us to work with the issue and make the best of a poor situation. We employed the principles of Airmanship, and it meant that we didn’t allow complacency to seep into our hangar. The lure of racing did not cloud our judgement and therefore we did not allow ourselves to be flexible as to what an acceptable level of safety might be.

Humans may not have been meant to fly, but we do anyway. In my case, the environment I fly in is one that inherently carries more risk. I hope that I never find racing to be a normal act in a plane, just like I hope you never forget that as humans, the sensation of flight is a privilege that isn’t normal. Doing something that isn’t normal is brilliant, and that is the magic of aviation.

Smoke on.