Matt Hall has kept his 2016 World Championship aspirations alive with a second consecutive victory in the Red Bull Air Race series in Germany yesterday.
Hall spoiled the party of home-town hero Matthias Dolderer with a 53.642 Final 4 run through the Lausitz track. The German's response of 54.417 left him in second place, with Canadian Pete McLeod third.
“It's good to have three podiums in a row,” Hall said. “It was what we were hoping for from the start of the year but things didn’t go our way with a few errors and my back injury.
“We are concentrating as a team on being the best we can be. We redefine what ‘the best we can be’ is at every race and it's working for us again."
Hall qualified second and started race day defeating Czech Petr Podlunsek in the Round of 14, setting up a match-race with Hannes Arch in the Round of 8.
Billed as the match of the round, it didn't disappoint with Hall taking the win by a mere 0.002 to advance to the Final 4 against Dolderer, McLeod and Czech Martin Sonka.
The result elevated Hall into second place in the championship, 16.5 points behind Dolderer with two races left in the series.
“The best way of beating Matthias for the championship is to keep winning races," he said, "but I can't control what the other pilots do and I can only focus on what we do well and that's be consistent. We will keep trying to win the title until it is not possible.
“We have a saying in our team that we ‘try and do the ordinary, extraordinarily well’ and we will keep that plan going.
"The happiest thing is that we're in a groove again, so the plan is no mistakes and always fast.
"I've got nothing to lose; I've been second in the World Championship before [2015 behind Paul Bonhomme], and I've raced to the wire in the Las Vegas final before."
With a maximum of 30 points left on offer in the two USA rounds at Indianapolis and Las Vegas, Hall will need to put in almost perfect performances to keep his championship hopes alive.
Hall needs to peg back Dolderer by a further two points at least in the next race for the battle to continue into the last round.
The Indianapolis round is on 1-2 October and Las Vegas two weeks later.