LAUSITZ, Germany – Matt Hall and the top half of the field were grounded at the Red Bull Air Race qualifying session on Saturday when a series of light rain showers repeatedly interrupted the session before it was finally postponed until Sunday.
Only the seven slowest pilots from Friday’s training session were able to fly through the 15-gate track in Qualifying while the fastest seven were unable to fly.
The Qualifying session is expected to resume on Sunday, when the weather is expected to be significantly better than on Saturday.
“It was a long afternoon,” Hall said after the qualifying session stretched out for more than three hours.
“I strapped in three times, started the engine once and got down to the end of the runway (when the session was interrupted). There’s a lot of mental preparation and psychology that goes into getting ready to take off. You go through that a couple of times in the afternoon and you run out of energy.”
Hall, who had the fifth fastest time in Friday’s final training session, is hoping to end his 2010 season on a high note after missing the last two races in Windsor and New York. He said the adverse weather conditions clearly made it impossible to fly.
“Obviously it was the right decision in the end to cancel because it’s now raining quite hard,” he added, as rain poured down on his hangar set up at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz motor circuit.
“The interesting thing is how they’re going to play out the rules with Qualifying. To split qualifying over two days is something new.”
Former Red Bull Air Race pilot Steve Jones said that Hall, thanks to his military background, would probably have a slight advantage in dealing with the repeated delays and interruptions. But Hall said that slight advantage might be negated by the fact that other pilots have more racing experience.
“I’ve done a lot of that in the military, being on alert postures and that,” Hall said. “But I haven’t flown as many aerobatic competitions as these other guys. Every competition pilot has spent a day or two sitting around waiting for their opportunity to fly. I would say that I’m not poor at waiting but I think the other guys are able to do it as well.”
