Matt Hall, Red Bull Air Race world champion pilot, is racing on Australian soil this week at an undisclosed location in the start-up racing concept Air Race X.

The former Royal Australian Air Force top gun fighter pilot has not raced since Red Bull sold the race in 2019.

New racing entities have since fallen-short at attempts to bring racing back due to cost barriers, inspiring others to turn to technology. 

Air Race X utilises augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality technology to create a metaverse racing experience for fans. Pilots will fly at speeds of up to 370km/h and maximum gravity acceleration of 12G as they make their way through a tight and technical track.

“Air Race X is experimental at this stage and can be tough to get your head around. It’s pilots racing at remote locations around the world, sending their flight data back to a central location to create correlating flight paths of computer generated race planes through a race track.

The computer generated race planes are then edited to appear as though the pilots are racing through the streets of the host city, which in this case is Shibuya, Japan,” Hall said. 

Pilots race at their chosen remote locations in a large paddock or large open space in their own time frame during the racing week of qualifying rounds and finals.

“It is a pretty complex flying schedule but ultimately it’s like most racing where competitors must lead the rounds to qualify for finals with the fastest times and least penalties. 

The pilots designate or assign each race against their choice of pilot in any order. 

“We can race any pilot at any time but have to submit our data within 90 minutes of racing,” Hall said.

The race data is processed against various penalties and algorithms with built in scoring parameters for location based factors. 

Air Race X is a project driven by Hall’s Red Bull Air Race rival Yoshi Muroya of Japan with the backing of Lexus Pathfinder Air Racing.

“It will be interesting to see how it all pans out. I give full credit to my mate Yoshi for creating the vision and bringing the whole project to life.

Pete McLeod and I have been working alongside Yoshi to develop the format and rules, but Yoshi and his team are behind the innovation of the digital aspects,” Hall said.

AIR RACE X Shibuya Digital Round consists of six days of qualifying rounds starting on October 8. The winner will be decided at the finals on Sunday, October 15. 

The final tournament of the Shibuya Digital Round on October 15 (Sunday) will start competition at 16:00. 

HOW TO WATCH

During the qualifying rounds, the results of the daily round-robin races will be shown on the official AIR RACE X website. 

By holding up an XR device or mobile device running the "STYLY" application, spectators can watch the race planes fly through the streets of Shibuya as if it were happening right before their eyes. The finals race will also be broadcast on AIR RACE X YouTube channel. 

An AIR RACE X special program, a complete 45-minute package of this competition, will be distributed worldwide in late October.

PILOTS

• Martin Sonka, Czech 

• Petr Kopfstein, Czech

• Yoshi Muroya, Japan

• Patrick Davidson, South Africa

• Mika Brageot. France

• Juan Verlarde, Spain

• Pete McLeod, Canada

• Matt Hall, Australia

For further information about Air Race X please see this link https://www.airracex.com/news/release230927.html

MEDIA CONTACT

For further information please contact:
Katie Gold – Commercial Director, Matt Hall Racing
m +61 404 551 551
e katie@matthallracing.com