Britain’s Nigel Lamb won the 2014 Red Bull Air Race series in a nail-biting final race in Spielberg, Austria, on Sunday. Lamb came second in the race behind France’s Nicolas Ivanoff (it was Lamb’s sixth second-place finish in eight races in 2014) and the nine points he earned for the finish vaulted him above front-runner Paul Bonhomme, also of Britain. “It’s a great day. It’s an indescribable feeling,” said Lamb. Bonhomme failed to qualify for Sunday’s final and his final total of 51 points was good enough for third on the season. Ivanoff’s second win of the season earned him fourth place overall but it was hometown favorite Hannes Arch, who ended up second overall, who was the catalyst for much of the drama over the weekend.
Arch was unbeatable through most of the qualifying rounds, often posting times a second or more faster than the other pilots. He went into the “Final Four,” in which the four fastest competitors square off, as the favorite but a two-second gate penalty relegated him to a fourth-place finish. “I wanted to be first and I tried to do everything to get that,” said Arch. “On the last run I might have tried a little too hard,” he added. Arch could have claimed the overall title with a first-place finish. Although he didn’t make the final, American pilot Michael Goulian achieved his pre-race goal of finishing sixth in the race, earning his first three points in the season. Fellow American Kirby Chambliss was just behind Goulian and Canadian Pete McLeod was eighth.
