Jun 24

RED BULL AIR RACE BUDAPEST: RACE DAY

The results from yesterday’s qualifying session paired us against Great Britain’s Ben Murphy heading into the Round of 14. Murphy was the first to fly and set a clean time of 58.996 seconds. Many of our results from preceding practice sessions were sub-59 seconds, so we knew a clean run should suffice. However, incurring a two-second penalty for an over-g resulted in a time of 59.528 seconds and knocked us out of the race.

We weren’t the only team to suffer g penalties in the Round of 14. Yoshi Muroya, Pete McLeod, and Juan Velarde all received DNF (did not finish) penalties for exceeding the maximum G of 12. When asked if the difficulty of the track was higher than anticipated, Kirby’s responded, “Not at all. Part of the problem with this track is it’s not challenging enough. The only challenging part of it is to not over-g in the vertical turns, and that’s the biggest opportunity to save time. My over-g was 10.98G for 0.066 of a second and the rule is defined at 0.06 of a second.

“I’m disappointed for myself, but I’m also extremely disappointed for my team as a whole. This race, in particular, they did a lot of extra work to solve some mechanical issues we were having. They had a late night yesterday just to get the plane ready for race day.”

We’re now officially at the halfway point in the season and moving forward, we don’t feel there’s a whole lot that we can, or will, change.

“I few really well today and the plane is running great. It’s just fractions of a second, and you have to be right on the edge all the time. Unfortunately, I was just over the limit today. We will always aim to go out and win races, but in regard to winning a championship this year? Some guys would have to make some really big mistakes for us to have a shot.”

The racing season will resume in Kazan, Russia, on August 25th and 26th.

 

For a full list of race results, visit www.redbullairrace.com.

 

 

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