SGP USA : Welcome to St-Auban Sean!

Still one race to go and one of the pilot could decide to not fly the last race today, he would still get his ticket for the Final in St-Auban, France, this August! Congratulations Mr Fidler, masterclass! I have let you some mouth watering picture above as a warm up ;-) (credits photos CNVV Saint-Auban and pilots who flew there)

Sean finished 2nd yesterday on a very opened race, with many pilots in a potential win all track long. The top 3 pilots are just 49 seconds appart after more than 2h45 racing a track of almost 360km length! Huge task, huge weather conditions, around 2200m max altitude. It was fun!

But first, congratulations to Jared Grandzow, winner of this fast and furious Race 5, average speed 128kph. Not bad for a crazy no engine aircraft hu??… Fidler is 2nd at +29 seconds followed by Richard Owen (+49s) who is the voice of the many videos you can enjoy about this competition. Thanks Rich for racing and commenting, so we get first hand reports, and as you said “this time, I managed to get an hint about weather forecast before taking off, and not checked tons of pictures all night long and… tada!”. Go check the interview of the podium there.

Yes sailplane racing sport is like any sport: you need to be focussed, you need to rest, you need to prepare and study. You need a plan and you need to adapt all day long. Yes it is about pilot skills, sure, but it is mainly about making decisions from different scales. Microdecisions are the continuum of piloting: “do I circle more steep now, do I open a tad?…”. Small decisions are about the rythm you put in your flight: “do I quit or do I keep this thermal?…”. Macro decisions are the where are you heading: “do I deroute there or do I keep it straighter?…”. If you think about the stress it puts on the pilots, just imagine that all day long they need to do instant microdecisions. Good for them is that for 80 to 90% of these microdecisions it is close to automatic: you feel, you do. For the small decisions, that’s a more demanding task and the rythmicity is around every 20 to 30 seconds and it is very little automated: you need to do. For the macro decisions, it’s around every 2 minutes and it’s the biggest energy consumption in the cockpit’s brain. Don’t ask me how to train all these, but you would be able to feel it if you have the chance one day to fly in a double seater with a sailplane champion. Just ask him to speak out loud what he is processing in his brain, why he is pushing-pulling now, why a more-less steep turn now, why he quits now, and so on. I believe you would be impressed, and feel exhausted rapidly.

Ho yes sure sailplanes pilots are sometimes quite old, and not very fit. These guys compensate less stamina with more experience and efficiency in all the processes they apply in the cockpit. Peak of performance for pilots comes eventually between 26 and 35 years old. Then you need to count on experience to hold it, or mistakes made by the youngest in your contest. Because yes, it is all about making less mistakes. My grain of salt for today? Train your body to stay fit as long as possible, without becoming extreme as more muscle means more oxygen consumption. Oxygen and sugar is fuel for the brain. You will figure out what to do now ;-)

So, what to expect for this last race in the bright sky of Florida? Well, we are again on best scenario, thank you organizers and pilots for that! Sure, one ticket is gone for Fidler, good for him! But the real battle is for 2nd place clearly and they are not less than 7 pilots in this race in the race! Fernando Silva, very resilient all contest long has 25pts, +1pt in front of a less stable Robin Clark, then comes perhaps the most SGP experienced pilot of the pack Gintas Tube with 22pts but Gintas had to adapt to USA weather and the glider he is using, a JS3 (he owns an Asg29 in Europe). Gintas is closely chased by Erik Nelson with 21pts who had also up and down during this Grand Prix. Same style with the chasing pack composed of 19pts Jim Lee, 18pts Jared Grandzow and 17pts Nelson Howe. Who will step on 2nd place? I have no idea! Silva will have the stress of defending. Any time in flight he will feel he is losing the grasp will make him feel more pressured, pushing for hard decisions, perhaps wrong ones. I don’t know him enough to know if he can handle that pressure. Robin Clark will try perhaps to keep an eye on Silva and hope that Zube stays under control too. Doubling personnality is not easy in flight! I strongly believe Zube will push very hard and perhaps bring the chaos in the race, asking his direct competitors to adapt or lose. He will not try to manage any of his competitors, this is what I would do in his position because I know he has the potential to flip the table. For that he needs a good start, a good first glide, a good first climb,… and then doing less mistakes than the others.

Good luck pilots! Bowl of pop corn is building up. Have fun, fly safe.

See you in France for the final.

All results for USA Grand Prix here.

Next race in few hours, follow it live here.

Benjamin Néglais, SGP Core Team