Briton Paul Bonhomme won the second round of the 2014 Red Bull Air Race series in Chiba, Japan, yesterday, beating Australia's Matt Hall into second place.
Bonhomme clocked a time of 0:51.502 in the Final Four round against Hall's 0:51.884 to win the round by 0.382 sec. German Matthias Dolderer was third with France's Nicolas Ivanoff fourth.
"Really chuffed with it," Bonhomme said when asked about his win. "We knuckled down and just got on with it and it's paid off."
Bonhomme made the final after qualifying third then beating Hannes Arch in the Round of 14 and local hero Yoshi Muroya in the Round of 8. Muroya disappointed the crowd with a DNF for a G reading above the maximum limits.
Hall qualified fourth, then eliminated 2014 World Champion Nigel Lamb and the USA's Mike Goulian to get into the Final Four in fourth place.
Hall raced first in the final, but his time was not as quick as he had done in the Round of 14. His time in that round of 0:50.888 would have won him the final had he been able to replicate it.
"I made a mistake on that run," he told Red Bull Media, "so I'm a bit disappointed it wasn't my best run of the day, but once again championship points are there and it's not about winning individual races, it's about the end of the year results."
Third-place Dolderer failed to beat Hall on clean time, but in any case was given a two-second penalty for passing a gate at an incorrect level, and the last to race, Ivanoff, was disqualified for exceeding the maximum G-levels.
Halls second place came after a tough week for all pilots, who were without their planes for three months, then were limited in practice by had weather.
"It was actually a pretty tough week because we didn't fly the plane for three months and the plane is a lot different to what it was last year," Hall said. "We only had one training flight and it felt like a stolen plane; it didn't feel like my plane, that's for sure, so I'm really happy with how we have come onto it and hopefully in the next race we will be more current and get straight into it.
“It was a strong performance from the team, we’ve had a rough week but we came through really strong.”
Bohomme leads the championship on 24 points with Hall second on 18 and Nigel Lamb third on eight.
The next round of the Red Bull Air Race series is in Rovinj, Croatia on 31 May.