RaceCanada had a chance to sit down with Pete McLeod before he and his team packed up and left Canada for Abu Dhabi for this weekend's Red Bull Air Race season opener.
RaceCanada – How did you get started in air racing?
Pete McLeod – For me, it's an aviation connection. Compared to a lot of racing, air racing has a bit more of entry barrier. First, you have to be a pilot, and while you certainly have to be able to drive a car or a motorcycle well to race, kids are on 4 wheelers growing up and at 16 years old they get a drivers licence, and a farm kid is probably driving a tractor backwards and blindfolded at 11 years old... For me it was a lot the same way, except it was with airplanes up north. My family is involved in the outfitting business in a small northern Ontario town, flying float planes, hunter and fishermen, so I grew up around planes. I was in the family plane at 6 weeks old, and on my dad's knee starting to take the controls at 3 years old, so the flying part for me is very normal, while for others that may be a bot of a “wow” factor, it's normal for me.
From their, the performance and competition side of it comes from my personal interest and nature. I got into aerobatics when I was doing my licence and safety training, just to be a better pilot, and I got hooked on it right away. I've always had a passion for speed and performance and competing, I played a lot of hockey growing up, and other sports, I lived on a snowmobile. We get a hard winter up their 7 months a year so a snow machine is a good tool to pass the winter. Really, anything with an engine, boats, snowmobile's, air planes, you name it, always interested me and was always fun. Typical guy stuff, basically.
So I got into aerobatics on the competitive side, to bring in my need for competition with the flying, and that led me into the air racing. The Red Bull Air Race Series is a relatively new sport. You know, powered flight has been around for 100 years, and people have been racing for the better part of that, anything with an engine, people are going to race. But the Red Bull Air Race really changed the landscape when they are able to come up with the very simple concept of racing against the clock, and each other based on time, and that's not subjective. So we're not worried about what a judges opinion is, so it's very cut and dry. With the development of the pylons, the air gates, they've been able to bring what happens in an airplane up in the air, very close to the ground. And it's very tangible, not only for the people on the ground to watch, but for us as competitors, to fly exceptionally close to solid objects, with a managed risk factor. A lot of guys in an airplane are going to dream, or say, I can fly under that bridge or around that tree, but there's always a pretty wide berth given, because the consequences of hitting it are pretty high. With the air gates, we can hit them so we can go to the limit and if we make a little mistake, cut the corner a little too sharp, you can fly away, and it's changed everything. Now the ground is still really hard, but we're pretty good at staying away from that.
This series came along in 2003 and I was still a young guy, in university, I was already competing in aerobatics, when I saw it and fell in love with it. It really changed my focus, I upped the focus of my competing and my sport flying to go in that direction. So I've been doing this now, full time, for nine years in the sport aviation world, and last year was my third season of racing, although we had a 3 year break in the series, so I've been in the top tier for about six years. And that's just a product of moving up through the ranks and I'm very fortunate that I get to compete at the highest level. I've had some great partnerships along the way with great support on the business side of it to be able to do this professionally, as well as support from family and friends all along the way.
So getting in to this, there is no course you can take, and the new Challenger class is looking to help address this as the sport grows, and becomes more popular, and create a more defined route. And this is important to the the future, to see it as accessible. I'm lucky that I have been able to live my dream, and get to keep on living it.
RC – You had 4 poles and your first win last season, so do you come into this season just looking to continue on that run, or has that success raised the projections for this season even higher?
PM – You always want to get better. Some of my assessment of last year, I would usually very quickly take the good, and say OK, but then dwell on the not-so-good, so I have to try and work on that. Some of the problems I had last year were a result of always trying to be faster. Last highlighted for a lot of people and created an image and persona of my flying that I'm going to push to the limit, a little bit of a first or last attitude, I'm going to try to win. I don't have a strategy for third place. That's not on my program. Now that being said, I'm racing against the best guys in the world, and third place is nothing to hold your head low about. The only way you have a hop of getting third is if you're going for first.
Last year definitely altered some expectations, not only for myself, but for others. It comes from all sides, it comes from the fans, it comes from my own team, myself, sponsors. It's very easy for the benchmark to move up and become the norm. Maintaining that, or beating it, can be a whole other story.
Coming into last year was probably a little more relaxed, and coming in this year I've got a lot more experience, I learned a ton last year, both good and bad, so my strategy is to apply that. But, to be honest, coming in to the first race there's a team out there that isn't nervous going in to the first race, because the season ends and we all go away to our respective off-season operations and we start working on the next season. Some guys, who's last season was a total train wreck started working on it even before the season ended and basically abandoned the remainder of the season.
It's a fresh start, and there will be some guys who show up at the top of the pack that are not surprises, there's always shock. Last year, who expected me to qualify first at the opening race? People were looking around, and Paul Bonhomme doesn't know what hit him there. And that can happen, so I think I have the opportunity to be there again, I would never expect myself to be there, I think that would be kind of brazen, and maybe underestimating the other guys, which is dangerous.
RC – Your the youngest pilot in the field, does that affect the way your competitors look on you, and did last year dispel any of notion that, proving that you can compete with any of them?
PM – I think there's very little question, with most of the guys, on my ability. The bigger challenge, in my rookie year, was being young and, not proving that I have the ability to be competitive, but do I have the ability to be young and have the maturity to handle everything that goes with that. For us the stakes out there are a little different. You've guys out there, say on a dirt bike, there stakes are broken legs and broken arms, and of course there is always the possibility of the really bad accident. In car racing, these cars are designed to crash, and that's an amazing thing, you watch F1 and these cars can hit a wall at 200 kph and these guys can get out of the car and walk away, and say where's my next car. It's amazing. We're not there yet, and airplanes are designed to fly, not to crash. It's a very different design philosophy from the start. As well we're dealing with energy packages that exceed anything else out there in motorsport with our speeds and how that speed is directed. So we don't get to ball it up and be a little bit reckless. Generally, young and stupid are two things that go together pretty well, so that was a big thing early in my career, and I've worked really hard to manage that.
From the competition side of it, it's a physical activity in one respect, but I would never compare what we do to a triathlete, or any sport where they are strapping on running shoes, tennis or hockey, absolutely not, but is there a physical element to it? Sure, is there a physical element to doing 500 laps on a racetrack, absolutely, but the older guys do a great job of staying in shape. I don't have to work as hard as they do for the same physical results, they get off a 15 hour flight, and they go straight to the gym, because they have to, so they work hard at it.
But their advantage is that 30 years of experience they have. And even moreso than that, with how close the racing is now, you line up and you're in a final round against Paul Bonhomme and Hannes or Nigel, these guys have between 40 and 50, or more, races under their belt, which doesn't sound like a lot for some sports, but we're doing 8-10 races a year, and Paul has raced in every Red Bull Air Race ever run. He's seen them all. He's seen every turn, every track layout, every design, an that's the kind of thing I look at and I'm just in awe of that kind of experience. The only thing I can do, is put my time in and try to learn as much as I can at every track. I wouldn't trade being young for anything, because the one thing I have is time. That's the flip side, I have the time to learn all of this stuff.
RC – Two new pilots will be added to the series this year, will that change anything, or will it just be more of the same?
PM – You never want to count out the new guys, but most of us know enough to to worry too much about a rookie winning the world championship. Of course that's not to say it can't happen. The field gets bigger, and there will be a bit of a format change. Now instead of two heat losers going through to the final round, there will be only one, and that changes things dramatically. Rather than having a 33% chance of going through, you now have a 13% chance, so how things pan out on race day, from taking a penalty here, to who you're matched up against, how hard you're going to push, versus what does it take to beat them, changing conditions, we race outside so of course we deal with weather, all comes into play. Wind is a big factor in all motorsports, for us, we fly on the wind, so for us it's huge. A slight wind change can change the speed of a track dramatically, an that can happen in minutes, so the guy you're racing against that runs a minute ahead of you could have a faster track or a slower track and there's nothing you can do about it. Those kind of variables, they were there last year, but a lot of guys got away with initial problems, or you come out and you're just cold, or you come out flat in the first round. In Ascot, Paul won the race, but he was completely flat and cold in the first round, and I think he lost that first round, but he got through as a lucky loser and you're going to see a lot less of that.
RC – As a guy who had four poles last year, the only pilot in fact with more than one, that should play into your hands, shouldn't it?
PM – Yeah, it's going to put more pressure on qualifying and I thought the results worked out pretty well for me in qualifying. We had a good strategy for qualifying, and putting down a fast time in qualifying. When they switch to the initial round of head-to-head your seeding is critical. If you're qualified first, last year first place generally had 2 – 3 seconds on 12th place. It got considerably closer near the top, so there was no advantage between 6th and 7th and you've got a mess on your hands, right in the first round. You're going to see strategy's change for qualifying, maybe not for me we did pretty well last year, but some of the other guys are going to start saying, hey we really need to show up on Saturday.
RC – In car racing when you're on the track, you've always got markers, lines or cracks in the pavement, clumps of dirt on the side of the track, to use to pick out your braking and turn in points. What is there for a pilot to use when trying to find his lines through the course?
PM – We certainly don't have the same number of references, and because we run in a time trial format, we don't have anyone in front of us to follow, and there is no worn section of pavement, no groove, to show the line, so there's a lot of experimentation that goes on. One of the things that some teams have, not all and some to a greater degree than others, is a tactician that is essentially setting out the lines using the complex data systems we have on board for positioning. To come up with an optimized line for the track, because between the gates we don't have a piece of pavement that says you have to be here. Now the gates are so close together that it's not like we can go to far, there isn't too much option, and you can generally find the shortest line.
As far as when to make those turns, a lot of it comes down to visualization, for me an entire site picture of my surroundings. I do a lot of video review where we're finding the lines, then I'm referencing data of fast lines that's all synched with video. The a ton of visualization to execute that perfect run. On the run in to start we've got more time setting up for the start gate to come into the track, I'll be lining up the gate with, for example at Texas Motor Speedway, I'll be lining the gate up with that building and that section of the stands so I know that's my line I want to come in on, and as I'm coming in, and as I'm coming into, in this case the chicane, I'm starting to see the radius and a lot of that just comes from experience. You're judging distances between gates on when to open up and close turns, and after that, depending on the conditions, that's going to dictate how tight you want to cut some corners. There's always time to shave, but if it's nasty out there, you have to some times just go with your gut and just open a corner up a little bit at the at the gate just so you're not clipping a pylon.
Race one of the Red Bull Air Race Series goes this weekend and can be watched via live stream at: