American pilot Kirby Chambliss won his first Red Bull Air Race for nine years on the weekend, taking victory in Budapest, Hungary.
Chambliss beat Canadian Pete McLeod, in-form Japanese pilot Yoshi Muroya and Czech Martin Sonka in the Final 4 round on Sunday. It was the American's first win since London 2008.
Chambliss qualified seventh, pitting him against Frenchman Francois Le Vot in the Round of 14 and Czech pilot Petr Kopfstein in the Round of 8. He beat both comfortably, but made it to the Final 4 with the slowest winning time.
Running first in the final, Chambliss laid down a 1:00.632, the fastest time recorded on the day. None of his challengers could beat it, putting the elated American on the top step of the podium.
"I'd almost forgotten what champagne tasted like," Chambliss quipped after his victory. "But I can tell you, when you're winning, winning is easy and when you're not, it's not!"
Australian Matt Hall was classified eighth after going through to the Round of 8 as the fastest loser, but was disqualified for subjecting the aircraft to too much g force.
After qualifying an impressive fifth, Hall came up against Frenchman Mikael Brageot in the Round of 14, but recorded a time nearly one second off his qualifying pace. It was enough to get him into the Round of 8, but he pushed the limit in a bid to catch Muroya in their match race.
“Today’s over-g in gate seven was my fault, but it was our plan to go out and be aggressive,” Hall said.
“Since we have transitioned into our new plane – a completely different type of aircraft to what I have flown in my first five seasons – the high-g pull has been our weakness. These planes have a 30-g-per-second onset rate and you literally have to do thousands of vertical turns to know how to set the g correctly.
“Our data all week has shown that we lose 0.7 seconds per vertical turn by being conservative at the moment. Coming into the Round of 8 against Yoshi, who has been blindingly quick of late, we had to try and make up that time. To do that we went aggressive.”
Ironically, Muroya was penalised two seconds in the match-up against Hall, which put his time outside the Australian's Round of 14 time. Regardless, Hall has no regrets about his aggressive approach.
"If we went conservative and hoped that Yoshi made a mistake we would not have learned anything,” he said. “I’m not overly disappointed, I had another fly in the track, which was the important thing. I got to experiment with the boundaries."
Muroya now leads the championship outright courtesy of his third-place finish. He sits on top of the table with 39 points against Sonka's 37 and McLeod's 26. Matt Hall remains in 11th place on 11 points.
The series now moves to Kazan in Russia, 22-23 July.