Austria’s Hannes Arch topped the time sheets in Thursday afternoon’s training session in San Diego ahead of the second round of the 2009 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in “America’s finest city” after Frenchman Nicolas Ivanoff posted the fastest training time in the morning practice session over San Diego Bay. Arch, the defending champion, got a maximum 13 points by winning the first race of 2009 in Abu Dhabi last month.

Britain’s Paul Bonhomme, who finished an agonisingly second to Arch in Abu Dhabi, was again behind the 41-year-old Austrian in the more important afternoon training session on Thursday while Ivanoff slipped to third. Two rookies broke into the top six with Germany’s Matthias Dolderer posting the fifth fastest time while Australia’s Matt Hall, who got a stunning fifth place in his debut last month, confirmed his strong start in the championship with sixth fastest in training.

“I’m quite happy with that today – the airplane is performing well,” said Arch, who was fourth in San Diego a year ago but has been on the podium in every race since then. “I still have to work on my lines. Nicolas looks very strong and so are quite a few of the others. It’s a difficult course. I like it but it takes a while to get used to it. It’s not my favourite course.”

But it is the favourite track for Bonhomme, who won San Diego in both 2007 and 2008. Bonhomme’s team managed to reduce his plane’s weight by 12 kg since Abu Dhabi and the Englishman has lost four kg as well to 88 kg. In Abu Dhabi Bonhomme and his plane were a total of 45 kg heavier than Arch’s.

“The guys have done a wonderful job with the airplane,” said Bonhomme. “That’s a good start. The thing is a 30 kg weight disadvantage is at 10 G a 300 kg weight disadvantage.” He said he wasn’t sure if the 16 kg weight reduction would be enough to narrow the gap to Arch, who beat him in Abu Dhabi by 0.89 seconds. “Dunno,” he said. “We’ll have to see.”

Source: www.redbullairraces.com