The Redbull Air Race World Championship circuit features pilots from around the world. This weekend, the season kicked off with the race’s leg in Abu Dhabi. The pilots hailed from many different locations around the world, ranging from the United Kingdom to Japan, Germany to Australia, and pretty much every country in between making it truly a global event.
The top three finishers were from the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada, respectively. Paul Bonhomme of the UK earned 12 points for his first place finish while Matt Hall of Australia earned nine for his second place finish and Pete McLeod of Canada earned seven for his third place finish.
The Redbull Air Race is structured much like a NASCAR race in that pilots fly their customized planes through a course for a qualifying round to determine the order in which they race (the fastest qualifying time races first, etc.) and the fastest time at the end of the competition round wins the race. Also similarly to NASCAR, the Redbull Air Race season is made up of multiple races where pilots accumulate points but unlike NASCAR, the Air Race venues are located around the globe in locales like Japan, Hungary, and the United States effectively reaching a global audience.
I can’t imagine flying in a custom build plane, scary! I love how Redbull brings together worldwide innovators and collaborators. They have so many events in so many facets of the sports world including sports that haven’t been invented yet! Redbull is a company that never ceases to amaze me. Great article!
I have always wanted to go see this in person! I think there was a red bull commercial a few years ago that showed some really cool footage from a camera attached to one of the planes and it looked so cool!
Insane!! That’s a true test of a pilots skills right there. Redbull is always promoting something crazy, I like it.