RIO DE JANEIRO – Australia’s Matt Hall used the two training sessions on Friday to experiment with his set-up on different sections of the track ahead of Saturday’s Qualifying for the third Red Bull Air Race World Championship event of the 2010 season, pronouncing himself pleased with the intelligence gathered on the high-speed track in front of Flamengo Beach.
Hall, who got a career-best second place in Perth last month, had net times in both times sessions on the 5,634-metre track that would place him in the top four even though he sliced open a pylon and incurred a six-second penalty in the final session on Friday afternoon that dropped him down to 12th in the time sheets.
His time was 1:28.00, or 8.80 behind pacesetter Hannes Arch of Austria. Without the penalty, he would have been fourth fastest, just 2.80 behind. Hall, in a three-way draw for third place in the Championship, is confident he can get another good result after coming within a half second of getting his first ever victory in the race in Australia three weeks ago.
“I went out in training 4 to experiment,” said Hall, a former RAAF fighter pilot.
“I would rather have not hit that pylon. The goal in that was I changed lines between Gate 3 and Gate 4 to see if that could make a difference. I don’t think it helped anyhow. But Ive got the raw data to study so that’s what I went out there to do.”
Hall tends to start each race weekend in the lower half of the time sheets before peaking in Qualifying and the race, using each of the four training runs to experiment with different lines through the 20-metre high Air Gate pylons.
“I’m just trying to improve,” said Hall. “What I’m trying to do in Rio is just consolidate on what we did in Perth. I’m not trying to do one better or aiming to do anything in particular. I just want to fly so that at the end of the race I can say I did my best effort and did a personal best. If that means I get on the podium or win the race that’s great. If I have a best race and make no mistakes and come 10th I can’t complain.”
Team Hall has been beaming data back to Australia overnight for analysis by motor racing legend Larry Perkins. Hall said he hoped to gain a crucial advantage with the pioneering approach to studying the high-tech analysis from his plane and performance.
“We’re spending a lot of time analysing the data,” Hall said.
“That’s the big reason I’m doing different things on every run. I’m pulling different G’s, doing different speeds, different lines and then I can see what my rates of acceleration and deceleration are. Setting the engine up different on every run so we can see what the effects are on each run. I’m confident it’s going to help us.”
For the results of training session 3, click here.
For the results of training session 4, click here.
Training session 3
Story courtesy of Red Bull Australia
