Matt Hall has said he will concentrate on consistency in his quest for a first race win in the Red Bull Air Race series.
Hall has finished second behind Paul Bonhomme in both rounds of the series this year, and yesterday was second fastest behind the Brit in training for this weekend's third round in Rovinj, Croatia.
"I'd love to win a race," he told Red Bull Media, "and I'm sure it will happen if I just keep doing what I'm doing, so I'm just treating every race as an individual race and try and do my best. If that results in me winning, that's great, and if someone else beats me, hats off to them."
The Australian's performance in 2015 has improved markedly over last year to the point that he is a likely contender for the Final Four every time out.
“I feel like I belong at this level now,” he said.
“I have had some good results in the past but so far this year it has been my consistency that I have been most happy with. I still have a lot less race experience than some of the older guys in the field but I’ve now had more than 20 races in my career and understand what’s required to achieve my goals.
“That, and the work of my team in overcoming a few obstacles to help get both myself and the aircraft ready to perform has really helped my confidence.”
The first training sessions in Rovinj proved challenging for all pilots, with several collecting penalties for incorrect levels or pylon strikes. Hall's run was clean, but his time of 0:54.192 was 0.721 sec behind Bonhomme. Third-placed Martin Sonka of the Czech Republic was a further 0.925 behind.
"The track here in Rovinj is not as challenging as last year's track," Hall said, "but it's still quite a technical track. We just had a bit of wind in training then and it was making us work really hard to miss those pylons."
Paul Bonhomme agreed with Hall's assessment. "I think it is challenging," he said. "On a calm day it would be just simple to fly through, but in today's conditions, it makes it very tricky.
"As we've seen, in races everything can change."
Saturday’s qualifying session will be live streamed via www.redbullairrace.com from midnight AEST, with Sunday’s race live from 10.00 pm (Round of 14) and midnight (Round of 8 and Final 4). Fox Sports will have replays from 3.30 pm on Wednesday 3 June on Fox Sports 5.