The World's Fastest Motorsport

Airplanes fly faster close to the ground. Red Bull knew that when they created the Red Bull Air Race Series: a low-level aerobatics race to find the best pilot in the world. A mixture of precision aerobatics and balls-out speed, it's so low-level that the rule-book actually threatens disqualification for any competitor whose aircraft touches the ground. But at 400kmph, it's a posthumous penalty. Dead and disqualified - the ultimate bad day at the office.

Ask any sports fan to name the world's most dangerous sport and they'll probably reply: Formula One. Ask Christian Horner, Team Principal of Red Bull's sparkling new Formula One team, and he'll give you a different response: Air Racing.

Billed as 'Formula One with Wings', against a ticking clock the world's premier pilots smoke their way through a series of inflatable gates on a 'racetrack' so low to the ground that, at the English leg of the inaugural World Series, organisers removed the sheep from the paddock so the rams wouldn't lose their horns.

 
From a safer vantage point, Horner compared this dangerous new sport with his daring old one: "The risks here are greater than those in Formula One," he said. "If you spin off and have a crash in F1 you get off lightly these days. If you have a crash here, it's going to be a big one."

So no more stiff necks at air shows. Red Bull have brought stunt flying to ground-level, something of a stunt in itself when you consider that Red Bull's application to host the English Air Race was rejected three years in a row by the Civil Aviation Authority on the grounds it was too dangerous. But the words "can't do" are not in Red Bull's vocabulary, which is good news for Aussie sports fans given that a potential start/finish line for the first Australian Air Race, provisionally calendared for 2006, is under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Flying inverted, of course. Gotta make it interesting!

People used to start boat races under bridges, until Red Bull arrived with its 'sports ideas think tank', which has founded or sponsored over 40 extreme sports. Flying high on the profits of his high-octane energy drink, Austrian tycoon Dietrich Mateschitz, an aviation enthusiast with a collection of aircraft that fills a hangar at Salzburg airport, wanted to create a sport which challenged the skills (and the stomachs) of the world's leading air aces.

In collaboration with Hungary's two-time World Aerobatic Champion, Peter Besenyei, Red Bull spent two years refining the slalom race in the sky. The result was what Besenyei terms "the ultimate aviation discipline", which has catapulted from a one-off event in 2003 to a stunning World Series in 2005.

The grand prix style calendar takes in 7 countries across 3 continents, with a television package beamed to 35 countries. Included in the calendar was the Dutch city of Rotterdam, where 700,000 people turned out to cheer on home-town hero Frank Versteegh in a race whose start/finish line was under a suspension bridge. So while draping a chequered flag from the Sydney Harbour Bridge would be extravagant, it wouldn't be a first.

The British Air Race was staged in the 900-acre backyard of Lord Bath, a radical royal who attended the event dressed as a hippie and sipping a Corona. A stone's throw from Stonehenge, the palatial setting known as Longleat was a sanctuary of rolling hills and dozing animals ... until a flock of 400 horsepower birds swooped from the sky for an afternoon's racing.

Up until Longleat, each course had been relatively flat. Looking at the English track, however, it was easy to see the CAA's objection. Scattered trees stood taller than the gates, with aircraft darting in and around both, at times even disappearing below the undulations of the grounds.

Frank Versteegh summed up the danger: "If you hit a pylon, it collapses. If you hit a tree, it doesn't." Frank's the funny man on the circuit. He's even been known to fly aerobatics with his dog as passenger. His fan club had followed him to Longleat, driving overnight from Amsterdam to fly a banner reading: "Frank, Frank, he's our man. He can fly like no one can!" Aerobatics? A spectator sport? 

  
In one of many similarities with Formula One, Saturday's qualifying times determine Sunday's race order. Pilots fly the course twice on race-day, and the competitor with the lowest combined time is declared the winner. But time penalties are enforced for flying the track incorrectly, and are added to a pilot's time at the end of his run. It's a revolution in aerobatics, as the 60,000-strong crowd discovered when the tower ordered the first competitor to switch on his smoke and dive. Thrills were guaranteed, although spills were at the back of everyone's mind.

A siren sounds as America's Mike Mangold buzzes the start gate. The former Top Gun, who once had to eject from a burning F-4, has entered the track too fast and will have a one-second penalty added to his time. Ranked second coming into Longleat, Mangold's military background has helped him adapt to the challenge of air racing, which, unlike the World Championships, is about flying manoeuvres as fast as possible.

"Pushing maximum G gives the extra speed," says Mangold, who graduated top of his class at fighter weapons school. "I'm the only military guy and I know some tricks on pulling Gs and finding speed."

 
Mangold's other advantage is his aircraft, the Edge 540. With it's mix of agility and acceleration, the American-built plane is considered the most suited to the air race format. Priced at US$290,000, the Edge has the edge. The rest of the field fly either the Extra 300, another American-built aircraft, the French Cap or the Russian Sukhoi. With top speeds of around 400kmph, these cutting-edge machines are built from advanced carbon composites, and are capable of withstanding more than twelve times the force of gravity, a stress under which conventional sports planes would disintegrate.

Only the start gate carries a speed restriction. Pilots can then fly as fast as they wish, which for these guys is never fast enough. After a 5G turn among chestnut trees, at a height that would have allowed him to pick some nuts, Peter Besenyei approaches Gate 2. Blue stripes on the pylons mean Besenyei's Extra 300 must pass horizontally through the gate, wings perfectly level, avoiding pylon and penalty.

His wingspan is 8 metres, the gate width is 12. So the Hungarian ace could be excused for taking a deep breath and holding it as he thunders through the slender gate, clean, fast and pin-point precise.

After wins in Abu Dhabi and Ireland, Besenyei is leading the standings after round 4, a wingtip clear of Mangold.

'Low and slow' are swear words in aviation, so as Texan-born Kirby Chambliss passes Gate 3, he pulls up to a height where he can safely perform a more elegant manoeuvre, the first of three in the circuit. Giant video screens around the paddock show the distorted face of the Southwest Airlines pilot pulling more G than an astronaut, as he yanks the stick back to head skyward, executing a vertical roll along the way.

The four-time US Aerobatic Champion believes Air Racing to be the most exciting thing ever to happen to the sport of aerobatics. "It's totally different from the World Championships. At aerobatic competitions it's all about precision. Here, it's how fast can I do the manoeuvre and get to the next pylon?"

But with excitement comes danger. Aerobatics is risky enough without doing it in treetops, where there's a very fine line between 'the right stuff' and rightly stuffed.

"It's dangerous because you're throwing in the element of racing in a high G environment close to the ground," says Chambliss, who knows better than anyone that the edge of the envelope is sharp. At a Chinese air show he collided with a lake at 170kmph when his controls locked up. The down to earth American, no pun intended, received what he calls a 'souvenir' - a laceration from the top of his left eyebrow stretching to the back of his skull. "People said I was lucky," jokes Chambliss, whose boyish fringe covers the scar. "But if I was lucky, it wouldn't have happened."

Weightless now, then pushing inverted over the top, British competitor Steve Jones points his propeller at Gate 4. Like an irate bird defending its nest, the 747 captain plunges 300 feet, takes the gate then pulls up, scorching toward the sky and two quick quarter-rolls. The crowd cheers as the tower commentator informs them that the Englishman is within a whisker of Mangold's time. Patriotism fuels the party; England had beaten Australia in the second Ashes Test just an hour before the event, so the 60,000 sunburnt Brits were higher than the airplanes.

But then it goes wrong. At bullet speed Jones' wing impacts a gate, earning him a 10-second penalty and ending his charge. Made from ultra-light spinnaker material, the pylon tears upon contact. The collision is so light that Jones first hears of the mishap from the tower commentator at the end of his run. He hadn't even felt a vibration on his stick. Spectators take their first breath in half an hour as the gate is replaced. Less than five minutes later the next rocket arrives. 

The crowd's hopes now rest with the second British competitor Paul Bonhomme, who's closing fast on Gate 5, the toughest on the course. Red stripes on the "quadro", a narrow 4-pylon gate, mean Bonhomme must traverse the obstacle side-on, called a knife-edge in the business. His Extra 300 has four times the horsepower of the average car but only a third of the weight, and the airline pilot flicks his nimble mount on its side, squeezing through the gate, his dropped wing a matter of feet from the grass. The crowd gasps in unison, before making a mental note to do their seat-belts up tighter next time they fly with BA.

Like his fellow competitors, Bonhomme wears a crash-helmet, fire-proof clothing and a parachute, but at the height he's flying he wouldn't have time to open it should something go wrong. The soft-spoken Englishman approaches the Air Race with different tactics from Mangold. "Efficiency is the key to flying faster," believes Bonhomme." Shaving off seconds is about being smooth. Speed is about discipline, not about being aggressive."

With Gate 6 behind him, Klaus Schrodt rolls out the topside of a loop. The G- force piling up, he plummets to earth, pulling out just in time to avoid becoming a picnic rug on the Sunday hillside. At 58, the German is the oldest of the 10 competitors, whose average age is 46. These daring old men in their flying machines are the finest stick and rudder men in the business.

"You won't find anyone competing below the age of 35 or 5,000 hours flying time because they won't be good enough," says Mangold. Klaus Schrodt has amassed over 20,000 flying hours, equating to 2.3 years spent in the sky. If you subscribe to Darwinian theory, he'll be sprouting wings shortly.

Potential pilots for the Air Race Series are selected from the top 10 place getters at the World Aerobatic Championships and the top 15 from the European event. "Additonally," says Besenyei, "they must be expert low-level pilots. I've been flying low-level aerobatics for 25 years. Flying low is my home."

After initial selection, candidates attend a training camp, with the cream of the crop invited to participate in a race. The best then qualify for the Series itself, and, better still, their share of the 500,000 euro prize fund.

Experience is everything in aerobatics. A veteran like 49-year-old Besenyei, nicknamed 'The Godfather of Air Racing', actually relaxes in the cockpit. On-board cameras show him hurtling toward the ground with the poise of someone sat in an armchair.

"We might look beyond our limits but we always play it safe," he says, painting a more sedate picture than the youngest competitor, 36-year-old Spaniard, Alex Maclean. Interviewed after a race last year, the father of two described flying the new format as: "A lot of tension. A lot of nerves. Even freaking and panicking at times. But that is actually good." A touch of masochism comes in handy when your job involves strapping yourself to a missile. 

Gates 7 through 11 are a tortuous series of horizontal passes requiring 6G turns and strong stomachs. None of the remaining contestants, which include the flying Dutchman Versteegh, Frenchman Nicolas Ivanoff and Nigel Lamb from Zimbabwe, can execute the turns as fast as Mike Mangold; it seems the Top Gun knew some tricks on finding speed after all.

But Mangold's main rival Besenyei finishes third, less than two seconds behind Kirby Chambliss, and maintains a slender lead in the series with only two races remaining. The last of these will be held on San Francisco bay, with pit-lane aboard an aircraft carrier.

After the presentations, a cocktail of champagne and short skirts, I risked ruffling the flyboys' feathers by asking if they'd genuinely been racing or were the crowd simply witnessing an air display with an edge - albeit a sharp one.

"With the personalities we've got competing it'd be impossible to fix it," replied Mangold.

"Second place is the first loser," said Chambliss. "If it was rigged, the Red Bull aeroplane would always win and it doesn't."

Too relaxed to retaliate, like his performance on the racetrack Paul Bonhomme gave a measured response: "On the Tuesday before the race everyone's laughing and joking, on Friday they're more serious, and come the weekend they're grumpy and deep in thought, concentrating on how to go faster than the others."

These guys were too cool. I had expected to duck punches with such questions. I don't suppose I could also get away with asking a Red Bull air hostess out for a drink ... ?

Red Bull are already working on different shaped pylons for next year's World Series; arches most likely, in case bridges prove hard to come by. With over 1.5 million spectators attending the inaugural season so far, not even the sky is the limit for this brazen new sport.