But this year Rakhmanin has the right plane - an MXS-R. That helped him get a career-best 5th place in Windsor last month and Rakhmanin now has 17 championship points. That lifted him in up to a career-high 7th place in the standings, even in front of 2006 champion Kirby Chambliss and wiped away disappointing memories of 12th place overall in his rookie season and 11th in 2008. The pilot from St. Petersburg is clearly one of the most talented aviators in the field and his elegant run in the Wildcard session in Windsor was a testimonial of high-speed, low-altitude precision flying at its very best.

“It’s the new plane that’s making a real difference this season,” the always-modest Rakhmanin said. “Nothing else has really changed that much. I’m still preparing for the flights the same way and I’m analyzing the mistakes the same way. I’m always looking for a better way. I like my new MXS-R but we’re still learning about the plane and adjusting. We need more time to adapt to it. I think success in the race depends on two factors – pilot experience and the plane’s performance. This year the pilot experience is about the same so the greater success is due mainly to the new plane.”

Rakhmanin, 47, went through a point-less first season in 2007 but it was hardly pointless as he learned a great deal about low-altitude flying. Trained in the former USSR as a dedicated aerobatic pilot, Rakhmanin’s improvement after joining the race in 2007 was slow but perceptible and he won his first two championship points last year as he clearly grew increasingly comfortable flying just metres above the surface.

“The Edge 540 I was flying in 2007 and 2008 was an ordinary ‘stock’ plane that could not really compete on the same level as the highly modified Edge 540s that the other pilots had,” said Rakhmanin, who was born in the East German city of Karl-Marx-Stadt (now Chemnitz). “The MXS-R is a plane designed for the race and I think it is more competitive than the stock Edge 540. We’ve also done a lot of work during the season to make it even better.”

Rakhmanin is a study in stoicism. Always polite, always analytical, the likeable Russian always weighs his answers carefully – even after he has had a glass or two of red wine. So when you ask if he expected this to be his break out year, he only says: “I hoped the results would be better with the MXS-R but it was difficult to predict anything and besides that I don’t like to make forecasts."

"It makes no sense to dream about results," he adds. "This kind of dreaming or ‘planning’ has absolutely zero effect on my performance. I’ll prepare for every flight the same way regardless of how many points I have. I’m just trying to utilise all the potential of the plane as much as my experience allows. There are still some areas to improve upon.”

One area he needs to improve on is penalties, in particular the 2-second time penalties handed to him for flying too high through the Air Gates. Some other teams whisper that Russian pilots inherently have trouble flying so low to the ground. But Rakhmanin said that was only partially true and only in the first half of his rookie season. He said he has had too many penalties this year for flying too high because the MXS-R tends to rise slightly during aileron rotation heading into the Air Gates, not because he has a Russian passport.

“That’s the first time I heard that pilot mistakes have some sort of national identity,” Rakhmanin said. “I believe that from a physical, physiological and psychological point of view there is very little difference between the nationalities. The only difference may be in experience in flying at extremely low altitudes. There are no laws in Russia that allow flying at such low altitudes and therefore any pilot from the Russian national aerobatic team in the unlimited category will have much less experience in this area than other pilots. I really had this problem when I started my first season with the Red Bull Air Race, flying an Edge 540 that was completely new to me. But from about the second half of the first season I did not have this problem anymore. My previous aerobatic experience helped me to adapt to that rather quickly.”

Rakhmanin said he is working on cutting down the penalties: “The trick with the MXS-R is that it has a tendency to climb during the aileron rotation. It’s not easy to control it because you have to compensate for it while directing the plane lower to the surface and you have to do it really carefully. This is one of the areas where I think simply time for adaptation for this plane is needed.”

Rakhmanin is pleased about the popularity of the Red Bull Air Race in Russia, where it has a dedicated following thanks in part to 7TV Sport Channel that broadcasts the races live. “We can feel the race becoming more and more popular,” Rakhmanin said. “We get lots of emails wishing us good luck and support not only from our fans in Russia but from emigrants from former USSR countries living in the United States and Canada. We’re really happy to feel so much great support around the world.”