Red Bull Air Race World Series 2007

I'm hooked! If there's any of you that's reading this blog who is an F1 fan, this is an absolute must new sport to follow. I HATE flying - motion sickness and whatnot, but I have to say I really enjoyed this experience. It's all about speed, and how good these guys are. Found out about it by default - someone in the company had spare tickets so sent a group email around and I checked out the website http://www.redbullairrace.com/ and well, I had to go. It was fabulous, although the waiting between the quarter finals and semi's was really pakaoing and they only had 2 helicopters doing cool flips and flying backwards to keep you occupied, it was only for a bit of the time. The venue was O2 at Canary Wharf and it was spectacular. These guys are so good, they fly barely a few meters off the water, and unlike F1, they don't actually race together :-) (d-uh: safety reasons... it's in the air), but it's all about the times they turn in. They have a qualifying on Saturday and here the 12 fastest are pared down to the top 8. After that, the eleminations quick in and that's really nerve wracking, coz you could have a better time than someone else following you, but if the guy you're paired with is faster...... it's bye bye baby. Basically, the 8 pilots pair off and race against each other, the faster one winning and moving to the semis. We actually had one of the quarter finalists with a 2 second faster time, but he was beaten by his pair, so got knocked out at this stage. The semis were great, with the times getting tighter and tighter, and no accidents as they zipped through the pylons just meters above the Thames, and finally, after a Mexican wave that looked more like a tidal wave across the banks of the Thames (both sides, in case you were wondering) start off, much to the dismay of the exceedingly partisan London crowd, Mike Mangold clipped the local hero Paul Bonhomme by 2 seconds plus change (as the American commentator was wont to say) - great stuff. Really spectacular, and fun as well, coz it's all to blaring music - really sexy stuff. The 3 place podium semis actually had the Bond theme going, so it was just too cool for words. London was the 6th of the series for this year, and they've already done exotic locales like Abu Dhabi, Rio de Janerio, Turkey and Interlaken and just the venues make this quite an addictive sport. Now that I've added air racing to my list of motorsports to follow, I'm hoping that one of these days, I'll get to watch it in Rio. Maybe this would be a good time to start the SEND APARA TO RIO FUND :).