Britain’s Paul Bonhomme won the 2009 Red Bull Air Race World Championship with a clutch victory in the final race of the season in Barcelona last month, just beating defending champion Hannes Arch of Austria in the final race.

Bonhomme’s compatriot Jenson Button already clinched the Formula One championship in the penultimate race, the Brazilian Grand Prix two weeks ago. Button is 15 points ahead of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel.

“It amazes me how quick they can build things in this region,” Coulthard said ahead of the Red Bull Air Race in Abu Dhabi after taking a high-speed, low-altitude ride over the track in a plane flown by Red Bull Air Race ‘media flight’ pilot Sergio Pla while Arch flew his Edge 540e alongside them. “We saw the whole circuit. It looks very good. I wish I was going to get the chance to drive it.” Coulthard, who retired last year after spending the final three years of his 15-year F1 career with Red Bull Racing, will be doing commentary of the F1 season finale for the BBC.
 

Designed by legendary German Formula One circuit designer and architect Hermann Tilke, the Yas Marina Circuit with its 21 turns and twists around a 5.55-km (3.4 miles) course around the island is a gem on the shores of the glittering waters of the Arabian Gulf just outside Abu Dhabi. Built by the Aldar Properties construction company, the complex includes a Ferrari world theme park, a marina, residential areas, water park, leisure facilities along with hotels and beach resorts nearby.
 

Abu Dhabi is fast becoming a major centre for international sporting events, hosting this weekend’s Formula One race, the first Grand Prix to take place in the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority announced earlier this year that it will continue as the opening venue of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship until 2011 after five successful years as host city.
 

Coulthard, who won 13 Formula One grand prix and had 62 podiums, spent several hours talking with Arch in Abu Dhabi before the race, peppering the Austrian with questions about his plane and the fast-growing sport before taking to the skies himself. Coulthard, who lies sixth in Formula One’s all-time scoring list with 535 career points, said he had long been impressed with the demands of the Red Bull Air Race. After experiencing forces of up to 9G and speeds of some 370 km/h just metres above the surface in the plane he admitted he had a deep respect for the 15 pilots.

“It’s a great experience even if this was of course not as quick as it would have been in a single-seater,” said Coulthard, admitting with a smile that he was happy to be back on the ground after the hair-raising 45-minute ride in the two-seater plane with Pla. “I’m hoping my face is starting to turn white again because I was feeling a bit yellow up there at times. It was a very gentle start to the flight and you think ‘oh, this is strange’. But the first time around the course I thought my stomach was trying to disappear into my ankles. The G force we’re used to in the Grand Prix car is external whereas for these pilots it’s all internal. My stomach is nearly pushing to me knees in one instant and then it’s back up in my throat, which I wasn’t prepared for. My seatbelt maybe wasn’t quite tight enough because my head was right up on the canopy. It was just a great, great experience.”

Coulthard, widely respected as a thinking man’s driver in the Formula One and long admired by the engineers of the sport for his precise analyses, could hardly stop asking Arch questions about the plane and the Red Bull Air Race.

“It’s very impressive to see the set up,” said Coulthard, who is team consultant for Red Bull Racing. “It’s a great spectacle. It’s like a Formula One car for the skies: it’s about being as small as possible, has lots of carbon-fibre technology, and it’s all incredibly light – which is also all part of the performance in Formula One. You can obviously pull a lot more G than we can pull in the racing car. All of the pilots here have to be very fit.”

Coulthard was especially intrigued by the small sharp pylon cutters attached on each wing – an innovation added in 2008 that helps quickly free wings from any pylon material that might cling to the surface after an Air Gate hit.

“I never managed to be a world champion in my chosen sport so it’s always impressive to meet athletes at the top of their sport,” said Coulthard, who finished as high as second overall behind Michael Schumacher in 2001 and was third overall in 1997, 1998 and 2000.

Arch, whose team partner is Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority, said he too enjoyed the opportunity to compare notes with Coulthard: “He’s a race pilot and you can see he feels the same things we do. He’s been asking me all those very same questions that are most interesting for me too. We share the same passion for racing. So from that point of view there’s hardly any difference.”