Thursday, June 17, 2010

Red Bull Air Race World Championship 2010 New York Report

An unfortunate run of bad luck has forced Team Muroya to drop out of the New York race. After an earlier mishap in Windsor that saw Team Muroya having to hurriedly prepare another aircraft to compete in, pilot Yoshi Muroya chose to stay in Windsor with the new plane to get as much practice in as possible prior to flying the plane to New Jersey for the New York round.

Bad weather then forced a difficult ferry flight in marginal weather requiring him to turn back twice. Muroya suffered the misfortune of clipping the propeller while landing at the Race Airport in New Jersey.

Without enough time to complete repairs prior to the New York race, Muroya took the decision to retire from the round, regroup and assess the problems of the last two weeks - and work towards a strong comeback in the European rounds of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship 2010.

Team Muroya expressed its apologies to supporters and fans for the disappointment and inconvenience caused in the Windsor and New York rounds.

 The team looks forward to their continued support going in to the European stage of the World Championship.



 Posted by Team MUROYA Racing

Friday, June 4, 2010

Windsor report and results

Windsor, June 4, 2010

Regrettably and with much disappointment, Team Muroya has been forced to withdraw from the Windsor round of the Red Bull Air Race Championship 2010.

During a practice session overhead Windsor Airport, a problem developed with the cockpit canopy which led to irreparable damage to it. Unfortunately the canopy is a custom item and a replacement is not readily available.
The biggest disappointment for the team is that the plane had been worked on for 2 weeks prior to arriving in Windsor to improve the engine and overall performance. These changes had shown to be effective during practice and the plane was performing well.

It will take approximately three weeks to reproduce a new canopy so a decision was taken to accept Team Arch’s offer to use their race plane from last year for the Windsor and New York rounds. However this aircraft was located in Oklahoma at the Zivko Edge factory and needed to be assembled including mounting the engine and various other components.

Team Muroya made a huge effort to get to the Zivko factory and prepare the plane in the short time available. Pilot Yoshi Muroya, Technician Takashi Nishimura and TC Rob Fry worked long hours for 2 days with a deadline of 3pm local time in order that Yoshi could ferry to Windsor before sunset on June 3rd. Unfortunately, although the plane was assembled and ready to go a problem was discovered with the electrical system and the engine could not be started as the time limit went by.

You can see Yoshi's Interview just after the retirement for the Windsor round here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUwEIp5BMTk

Posted by Team coordinator Robert Fry