wings

The Red Bull Air Race blew through town last weekend, reminiscent of supercharged aviation glory days and splashed with a modern marketer's panache across jumbotrons and skylines. Featuring a barrel-rolling helicopter, high-speed landings from skydivers only feet away (one of the only benefits of our not-great Zone 4 tickets, visible in the background of the photo below - I spent half the day trying to see around the carousel), various air show fly-by staples, and of course the shit-hot racers bat-turning and skimming over the water through the tight, exciting course, the action exceeded my expectations, which were high.

photo by Mike Pierzynski

Interestingly, I thought the sideshow stuff would be more sophisticated and hyped-up than it was. The flight simulator in GM's Wintergarden was pretty much just what anyone with an Xbox could set up in their living room, and the rest of the usual fare for this type of thing was lessened - I only saw one souvenir booth (with a really long line), one local radio booth, a Saab display more than a block away from GM HQ (with a jaw-dropping, 100%-ethanol-burning, Aero concept) and a few second-tier model types with Red Bull shirts mingling in the crowd. Additionally, if you were out in Zone 4, the jumbotrons were binocular range away and I had to concentrate to catch the over-the-top excitement of the announcers; it would have been smart to hang one of the jumbotrons and add some speakers at the far side of Zone 4 instead of stacking two, facing in the same direction, closer to the RenCen (though the use of cranes to do this may have precluded that option as it would've been close to the helo and skydiver landing spots). Even if they didn't move the screens, though, audio needed to be better. They tried to keep spectators up to speed, but most people in Zone 4 seemed unsure of the end result of the race (American Kirby Chambliss edged out Paul Bonhomme, a Brit).

Basically I expected the racing would be great to see the first half-dozen times, growing monotonous, but all packaged up in a super-slick marketing package to maintain interest. Almost the opposite was true; the marketing was pervasive but not oppressive, and the racing was awesome right to the end. Not once did I want to miss a run, especially as Zone 4 saw the 230-mph approaches maybe 50 or 60 feet above head level. The flying was extraordinary, the skill of the twelve pilots so perfectly matched that finish times at the top were separated by hundredths of a second, and while there were thankfully no major screwups, even tiny mistakes sliced dramatically through the little margin for error they had; a couple of times it was easy to see when a pilot dipped a little low, looking as if they were about to slam into the water. I didn't see any pylons get hit, though we did see a practice run last Thursday where a pilot hit two pylons, one on the quad (the pad with four pylons on it) and one on the very next pad, deflating both immediately.

I hope it comes back to Detroit next year - the perfect setup short of getting to ride in the photo helo would be a few tix in whatever zone is right in the middle of the course with a room at the RenCen Marriott to fall back to (though after looking at the pix on flickr, maybe watching from the Windsor side would be better, scenery-wise). Fingers crossed.

UPDATE: Looks like I was wrong about no one hitting a pylon! This and other great shots over at Detroit BikeBlog (photos by Adrian Platts) - you can just see the tip of the pylon clipped off - amazing that he got this shot, but as you can see from his blog, Adrian takes some outstanding photos: