The Red Bull Air Races are in the books. As most of you probably know by now, but for those that don’t, Paul Bonhomme is the Red Bull Air Race San Diego Champion. Today was an extra special victory for Bonhomme as it was his 43rd Birthday. The pilot he “edged” out was Kirby Chambliss, who was looking unstoppable all weekend long, by a mere 1.11 seconds on the final race. Chambliss’ modified Edge looks to be working really well for him and I’m sure with some more time flying it, he will improve with it. In 3rd place was Nigel Lamb with his MX-2 and looking more and more comfortable with it each and every round. I’m guessing that the Perth race is going to be every bit as exciting as the San Diego race was.
Today started off well as we “slept-in”… until 9am. Jeremy “Toro” Billeaudeaux showed-up to find a house of snoring Flying Giants members. After some scrambling to check weather forecasts and post reports, Max and Jeremy headed out to the race while Matt and I were finishing up things around here. We left about an hour after they did and before we reached the 5, Max called to warn us about the traffic. Well, after almost 3 hours of stop and go, some "making time" driving and of course lunch at In-N-Out, Matt and I showed up after the first elimination round. We used our proudly worn Press Passes to get to our parking spot up front and grabbed the equipment and rushed out to the media area. Max met us and took Matt and the video camera out to interview some of the general public in the area around the Jumbotron. I was able to watch the next few elimination rounds before getting to work. It was quite obvious that the top 8 were well practiced from the days before and with the break from the heavy winds, all times were in sub-1:30’s.
After the second round of eliminations, I had the opportunity to use the BIG 400 lense on Max’s camera. This is like compairing apples and bowling balls from my little Sony camera I normally use. Of course the pictures are also of poster quality as opposed to just 8x11 quality. The flying in the semis, at least from what I could tell, was just as intense, but the second pilot to run never knew what the previous pilot’s time was until AFTER they went through the course. I know the feeling it leaves getting ready to fly without knowing the score to beat, and it’s worse than butterflies. Everyone had clean runs and the winners of the rounds did so by just over a second and a half. Watching the racing while taking pictures was also different for me as I wasn’t watching for fun or picking up on the pilots little tricks, it was for what lighting would give me the best, brightest pictures. After looking at my pictures and going back to Brett “heydick” Bayless’ pictures taken on Friday, I have a lot more work to do. By the end of these eliminations, the boys were back and I was ready to relinquish the camera to Matt and take over on the video camera duties.
The consolation race and the finals race were certainly off the hook. In the first heat of the consolation race, Steve Jones was racing through the course like he was going for the gold. Unfortunately he had a 3 second cut that sealed his fate for fourth place unless Nigel Lamb did something similar. That wasn’t the case as Lamb took his MX-2 and put up a cut-free flight that finished 1.40 seconds ahead of Jones for 3rd place. Next up was Kirby Chambliss in the first heat of the finals race. Chambliss dove into the course and raced around like his tail was on fire and his mistake-free flight landed him a time of 1:24.69. Everyone, including Chambliss, thought this would seal the deal for the victory. Well Paul Bonhomme didn’t know what time Chambliss had turned in, but he did know that regardless of his placing, he was about to take over the lead in the Red Bull World Series. But that wasn’t enough for the birthday boy as he annihilated the course and posted a weekend best 1.23:80! What more could a pilot in this series want for his birthday…
I never imagined that this weekend would have been as fun and exciting as it was. I want to thank Max and Monica, Matt, Pedro, Brett and Jeremy for all the great times during and after the event as well as working with them to bring this coverage of the Red Bull Air Race from here in San Diego. We hope that you’ve all enjoyed the Flying Giants RBAR coverage and stay tuned for more photos and videos, including pilot interviews and more racing. Time for bed, tomorrow is Shootout training with Jeff Szueber and then Matt's gonna show me the ropes on a dirt bike...