Sunshine And Spectacular Air Racing Made Ascot A Great Red Bull Event

Home to Europe's premier horse racing event, Ascot hosted the Red Bull Air Race for the third consecutive year last weekend, August 13-14. Situated in the beautiful wooded countryside of Berkshire, Ascot depicts an idyllic portrait of traditional British sporting heritage.

While the Ascot horse races every June are best known for bringing out proper British Gentlemen and Ladies dressed in their finest, the Red Bull Air Race event offers a sport of a different pedigree and horsepower. The Red Bull Air Races at Ascot bear no resemblance to the Ascot we learned about in the movie, ‘My Fair Lady.’

Here’s what the top three Master Class winners had to say about the Ascot race:

First Place winner, Matt Hall, said, "I feel brilliant! I got up this morning thinking about Qualifying and how our results weren't great yesterday. We had a problem and needed to fix it, which we did. We didn't want to go out there all guns blazing and risk new lines and make errors, so we had to creep up and improve our times run by run. The plan was to get to the Final 4 and go from there."

Runner-up, Matthias Dolderer, added, "Are we happy with second place? Of course. But we are a little bit disappointed that we didn't win. We were really fast and dominated all week, but the last run didn't really work out the way I wanted. I was flying a little bit more conservatively, but we flew well and now we're really looking forward to Lausitzring."

Following up in third place, Hannes Arch, said "It was a crazy week. It started with engine problems, then technical problems, then I couldn't find the right lines. Then today I was out, then in and then back out again. I don't think I was properly prepared for the Final 4 and that's why I made a mistake, but overall I'm happy with third. The outlook is good, Dolderer isn't too far away, so we will work hard and the team believes in itself so we will go to Lausitzring fully motivated."

The racing returns to Germany for its second ever race at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz on September 3-4. And remember, the races are coming to the United States on October 1-2 in Indianapolis.

(Image from file)

FMI: http://www.redbullairrace.com/en_US