‘I Avoid The Word Stunt’: Matt Hall on his extraordinary career

Matt Hall Racing started in 2009 as a spin off from my other company, Inverted Downunder, which started in 2004. I’d been a military pilot for about 15 years, and thought, ‘oh, I need to buy little aerobatic planes’. I started a business – which I named Inverted Downunder because it means that for the northern hemisphere, we’re upright – and that then led to being involved in the Red Bull Air Race, and that’s where I formed Matt Hall Racing.

AA: Can you tell us about your time with Red Bull Air Racing?

MH: I went to Perth one year when I was still in the Air Force flying the F-18, and watched these guys racing on the Swan River, and I thought ‘these guys are bloody idiots’… and then I became one. They basically offered me an opportunity I couldn’t refuse, which was to do some training with them and see if I had what it took to be a race pilot. I’ve always been someone who’s up for a challenge, so I thought, ‘well, let’s have a look at it and have a crack at it’. They gave me the position to be a race pilot, so I had to resign from the Air Force as a Wing Commander, buy my own race plane, find my own race team and employ them. As it turned out, in my first year, I came third in the world, and it seemed like it was all set for me to get into it and do some good racing.

I was, in fact, in the end, probably one of the most successful pilots in the Red Bull Air Race. I’m not going to call myself an air race specialist, because there’s lots of different forms of air racing, but as far as the Red Bull Air Race was concerned, I was, and turned out to be reasonably good at it. I think I had about 60-odd race starts – which is not a great deal, but for what we’re doing, it is – and then I had just shy of 30 podiums, so, a podium in almost 50 per cent of my races that I did. I’ve got five world championship trophies at home, being one third-place, three second-places, and one first-place. So, out of the years I was doing it, I also got a world championship trophy on more than half.

AA: How did the races work?

MH: It’s a time trial where basically you’re flying between pylons, which we call gates, or around individual pylons. We’re doing it at about 10 metres off the ground, at about 400 kilometres an hour, at about 12G, so there’s a lot of stress on the body and the plane, and you get penalties for either hitting a pylon – which is highly desirable, not to hit one – and/or exceeding limits of the aircraft. There’s a fair bit of pressure on, but it was a sixty-second run, typically for tracks all around the world. We were compared on our timelines of who got the fastest time, and it was a knockout heat series for the race day – last man standing won the race.

AA: What was your biggest heart-attack moment as a race pilot?

MH: I hit the water in 2010 – skimmed off the water and was able to gather it up and fly away and land back at the airport. That was fairly hair-raising. I’ve had some other ones that weren’t as famous: I clipped a pylon in Budapest, actually, on the river there in front of Parliament House. It was a single pylon that I was going around, and I clipped it with the low wing tip in the thick material, and it yawed my plane towards the water, which would have been a fatal accident had it continued that way – I would have cartwheeled into the water at 400 kilometres an hour – but I was able to gather that up and miss the water. That was probably just as hair-raising, but because I didn’t actually hit the water, it didn’t get any attention.

AA: What have you been doing after Red Bull Air Racing?

MH: We have been expanding the business of Matt Hall Racing – I think everyone’s shrunk in COVID, and we’re bouncing back. We do a lot of corporate speaking: we’ve just acquired another corporate speaking company, Afterburner, to help people out there achieve their best and motivate them. We do a little bit of charter flying, we do a lot of experiences in our two-seat aircraft, and I’m an ambassador for a lot of big companies, but also for a lot of not-for-profit charities trying to raise money, especially for sick children.

The company’s going well. We’ve got a lot of good people out there helping within the company to keep it working, and a lot of good support outside of the company, with our sponsors and the companies I’m ambassador for – and it’s quite a good feeling to know that you’ve got people out there wanting to help, and knowing that you can then turn that into helping other people. It’s a bit of a compound effect that I really enjoy.

AA: Can you tell us more about Afterburner?

MH: I’ve just acquired Afterburner Australasia as the CEO, I’ve got a team of people working with me for that. The company has been, going for over 20 years now, and what it is, is a bunch of fighter pilots from all around the world explaining to businesses how to achieve flawless execution – or rather, there’s no such thing as flawless execution, but it’s how we perform to get ourselves as close as possible every time to being flawless. When you’re flying a fighter at 2000 kilometres per hour, you can’t afford to make silly mistakes. You’ve got to be on target, on time, every time, and so we teach people the method that fighter pilots are taught to achieve as close as possible to flawless execution.

We’re using a work cycle we call the “flawless execution model”, and it’s about how to make sure that everybody knows what the plan is by using briefings, and then maintaining situational awareness when we execute, to then end up debriefing to improve next time.

AA: Can you talk us through the headline stunt you’re performing at Avalon?

MH: I always avoid the word stunt, because stunt sounds risky – what I try and do is very low risk, but it looks risky, so it’s a bit of an optical illusion. Uniquely for Avalon this time, I’ll be racing Will Brown and his Ampol Red Bull Racing V8 Supercar. We’re doing a standing start on the runway with a flag drop, and then we’re racing about 1.3 kilometres down the runway – so not the full length, it’s a big runway here at Avalon, but about 1.3k down the runway – at which point I’ve got to pull up and do two and a half rolls, and Will has to go max rate braking, turn around and race back up the runway. By the time I get through my two and a half rolls and pull back over the top, he’s already halfway back down the home straight, accelerating, and I’ve got to do my best job to catch him by the finishing line.

I have raced supercars before, I raced Jamie Whincup a number of years ago, but it was just a short acceleration drag at Sydney Motor Park. This is the first time racing a V8 Supercar with an out-and-back race. I’ve done a few other things with cars before, but first time with a Red Bull race plane and a Red Bull race car out there going head to head.

AA: What would be the trickiest part of the race?

MH: For the race itself, there’s nothing too tricky – but then after the race, we’re going to give everyone a bit of a photo opportunity. We’ve got to time it right. I’ve got to get Will just to accelerate himself up to about 180 kilometres now, rapidly, while I’m flying in from behind him, and then I’m going to fly formation with his car, believe it or not, in a side slip for the first pass with my wing tip about a metre next to his head as he’s driving the car down the runway. Then he’s going to stop and turn around, then we’re going to do the same thing again, but this time, I’m going to be flying upside down above his car back down the runway.

So, they’re the two things that require the most thought, because racing is racing, and it’s just like, “just go fast”, whereas we’ve got a lot more moving parts when we’re doing the photo shoot. Will can’t see me, and I have to look straight up above me, which is actually below me, to see where he is – but also be flying out the front, because I’m at a low level. If I’m staring at him, I can descend on to him while inverted, so I’ve got to scan him below me and then continue to look at the front to make sure that I’m not descending while flying upside down along the runway.

AA: What advice would you give to aspiring race pilots?

MH: It depends on what age they are. If they’re young and still at school, the advice is “do well at school”, because good school results open doors for future opportunities. If you’re just looking at getting into racing, you need to be a good aerobatic pilot before you can be a race pilot, because you are flying the aircraft to its limits while racing, and if something goes wrong with the plane, you need to be very comfortable in recovering from a G-stall or a wing drop or anything like that, to get yourself out of trouble as soon as possible.

So, a lot of flying, a lot of discipline, but never lose focus of the dream of doing it – because, you know, sometimes life is hard, sometimes life throws challenges you weren’t expecting, but you’ve got to be able to see your way through the short-range challenges to maintain the big picture of the long-term dream.

AA: And what would be the #1 skill for an aerobatic or race pilot?

MH: Awareness. Situational awareness, knowing exactly where you are at any particular time. So, you know where your out is, you know where you’re planning to be, and how close you are to that point. You’re never perfect – you might be out by millimetres, but you’re never perfect – so always just knowing where you are and where you want to be. It’s situational awareness.