Matt Hall was denied his first Red Bull Air Race win in Abu Dhabi on Saturday when Paul Bonhomme beat him in the Final Four round by only 0.084 of a second.
Pete McLeod and Hannes Arch took third and fourth respectively.
The result was bitter-sweet for Hall, who equalled the best performance of his career, a second place in Perth in 2010. However, coming so agonisingly close to his first ever race win left him rueful.
"I never thought I'd have a pang of disappointment coming second," he said afterward, "but I really thought I was going to get my first race win. I pushed hard in the Final Four and I was gaining on him. Second is a great place to start, especially as we were so close to Paul."
For Bonhomme it cemented his love of the Arabian Gulf circuit.
"I'm very happy with the win," he said. "We like Abu Dhabi, the raceplane runs well here and it feels like home. I wasn't well at the beginning of the week. Qualifying first actually gave me a difficult run to the Final, but we had a great result.
"Racing Nigel [Lamb] twice was hard, especially when he got a 57s time. It would've been easy for that to spook me."
Hall qualified in second place behind Bonhomme, which set him up for a head-to-head race with French rookie Francois Le Vot in the Round of 14. Even with a two-second penalty for a pylon strike, the Australia dispatched Le Vot, then in the Round of Eight, defeated another Frenchman, Nicolas Ivanov.
In a thrilling finish to the Round of Four, both Hall and Bonhomme blistered around the circuit, with Hall's 57.871 not good enough to wrestle the trophy from Bonhomme, who ran the track in 57.787. Pete McLeod was nearly a full second behind Hall in third place.
Hall has no doubt the modifications made to his MXS racer had a huge impact on his performance.
"The winglets are definitely what's giving us that edge. Typically last year we were always hanging about half-a-second off the pace ... I've now got capacity and I think we've got room to move with them as well.
"I can get more out of my plane, but they can get more out of their planes as well, so we'll see what happens in Japan."
Hall's race ambitions will have to wait until 16 May when the next round is staged in Chiba, Japan.