The Red Bull Air Race (RBAR) series went into the Hall of Mirrors after the 2010 season and took a good long look at itself. The result was an enforced four-year lay-off whilst the company scrutinised every aspect of the series from the business model to the racing rules.
After several heart-stopping incidents in the season, including the Perth crash of Brazilian Adilson Kindlemann and Matt Hall's impact with the water in Ontario, it was becoming clear the pilots were flying in very narrow envelopes between triumph and tragedy. Only a few weeks after the season, Spaniard Alejandro McLean was killed while practising for an air show.
RBAR returns on 28 February in Abu Dhabi, with the series having used the four years to make the transition from pure entertainment to serious motor sport. Outwardly, the changes are so subtle that few in the crowd will notice, but internally the new rules mean the pilots can try their hands knowing they have a larger margin of safety.
The changes include:
- Standard engine in every aircraft: Lycoming Thunderbolt AEIO-540-EXP
- Standard propeller: Hartzell Claw counter-weighted
- Aircraft weight increased by 20 kg
- Maximum allowable G-force limited to 10g rather than 12g
- Pylon heights lifted by 15 feet
- Narrower altitude envelope to work with
- No more knife-edge gates
- Events now fully-ticketed rather than free entry, and the city has to pick-up some of the responsibility for running the event.
Although an increase in weight of 20 kg seems minor, Australia's Matt Hall says it stands to make one of the biggest differences to the aircraft handling.
"Previously, everyone was running on absolute min weight, which means wherever the centre of gravity ended up, that's where it ended up!
"You didn't have any room to move. It was a safety issue, and was part of the problem with my plane in 2010, it ended up right on the limits of weight and it was too tail heavy.
"That was one of the things the pilots were talking about, where to put the telemetry. The MXS had the telemetry a lot further back than the Edge and we ended up with some massive dynamic CofG issues."
That is not something the crowd will even notice, but some of the die-hard fans will miss the knife-edge gates, where the plane had to pass through pylons with the wings vertical. What few realised is how close to the envelope the pilots were flying.
Matt Hall: "We used to have issues, especially during the high-G 270 degree turn then a reversing roll to the knife edge: we're struggling under G, the aircraft is losing energy, then to do a knife edge between two pylons was tempting fate.
"There were a couple of people who were disqualified doing that manoeuvre, so they decided it didn't actually add to the sport, but it did add to the danger, so that's out!"
The increase in pylon height and the narrower altitude envelopes will work together to keep the aircraft further away from the ground or water than previously. It is thought that nearly every pilot came within a foot or two of impact, with Kindlemann and Hall both running out of room completely.
For Australians, one of the biggest changes is the loss of the Perth round, held over the Swan River, which became a victim of the new business model. A round was offered to the city, but the City of Perth didn't want to make it a ticketed event.
"That was a bit of a stopper for the City of Perth," Hall explains. "They wanted it over there to entertain the community, but we're no longer an entertainment, we're a motor sport.
"There is the facility to make it a non-ticketed event, but when they do that, the city has to absorb the costs. Perth was offered the spot and they rejected it due increased costs, but that was because they wanted to run it as a non-ticketed event."
"I think there'll be an Australian race [in the future]; there's still a lot of debate and negotiation. It's a matter of getting the right venue and there's a number that I've done site surveys on already. I believe it will occur, it's just a matter of getting the right contract."
Until that happens, the series will be restricted to eight rounds with 12 pilots contesting. To keep the flyers on their toes Red Bull has initiated a challenger series. This entails eight pilots racing for points using standard aircraft, the Extra 330LX, to gain experience before being elevated to compete with the seasoned race pilots.
In January, the Federation Aeronautique International (FAI) sanctioned the series, completing RBAR's transition from entertainment to full motor sport.