system

I can’t say that this is a big shock. Red Bull did a good job of promoting the races and the pilots are obviously highly skilled and fierce competitors. But, it seems there are too major flaws in the concept. First, I think they tried to have too many races in locations that have little base support for general aviation. Russia, really? Better to have stayed in Europe and North America. Second, watching small single engine airplanes buzzing around a course is kind of like getting fans to show up at Indianapolis or Daytona to watch go carts buzz around the track. People want large and noisy. Red Bull put on a great venue and did their best, but unfortunately there just aren’t enough small plane nuts out there to support the program.

system

This happened because Red Bull owner, Dietrich Mateschitz, finally pulled the plug on his Red Bull Air Race CEO, Eric Wolf. Wolf, who retired under duress as a Major General in the Austrian Air Force due to financial improprieties, has lost over $200 million since 2013 running the races. He had little to no experience in promotion of this type of event and was a terrible choice. He finally started bringing people who knew what they were doing in this past year but too little too late. Wolf could not even get the calendar set for the current year much less future years. This failure rests on one person and one person only—Mr. Wolf.