March 1, 2014 - Britain’s Paul Bonhomme won the 2014 Red Bull Air Race World Championship season opener in Abu Dhabi on Saturday with a clutch performance in a pressure-packed finale ahead of his perennial rival Austria’s Hannes Arch in second and Canada’s Pete McLeod in third. 

The defending champion had fallen behind both red-hot McLeod, who got a career-first podium, and his old nemesis Arch in the penultimate round of the high-speed, low-altitude racing over the turquoise waters of the Arabian Gulf. 

He managed to fly nearly two seconds faster in the final round with the day’s best time, 56.439 seconds with Arch a blink of an eye behind in 56.776. It was a fittingly thrill filled start to the 2014 season of the world’s fastest motorsport series.