Britain's Paul Bonhomme dominated the qualifying sessions of the Red Bull Air Race in San Diego on Saturday finishing with the fastest time of the day.

Bonhomme, battling a stomach ailment had tremendous runs through the challenging course just above the waters of San Diego Bay. Kirby Chambliss of the United States posted the second fastest time while Mangold was third and Arch fourth.

Bonhomme’s time of 1:16 was nearly two seconds better than his first session and well ahead of Chambliss in second place. “I have to say that the time did surprise me,” said Bonhomme. “I put in a steady run the first time, thinking that’s what I need to get into the Super Eights. The second run I thought ‘Let’s push it a bit further’. I’m not sure I can go a lot faster than that.”

Rounding out the first eight were Michael Goulian (USA) in fifth, Alejandro Maclean (ESP) in sixth, Nigel Lamb (GBR) in seventh and Peter Besenyei (HUN) in eighth. Arch was especially pleased with his consistently good performances in Saturday’s two Qualifying runs after topping the charts in Friday’s final training. “It went quite well and I’m very pleased,” said Arch. “I’ve been able to steadily improve my performance even though I was anything but satisfied with the first training.  We’re going into the race with the strategy of moving forward step by step and that worked out well today. I’m extremely pleased with fourth place.”

Less pleased with Qualifying were Britain’s Steve Jones and France’s Nicolas Ivanoff. The two pilots, who are often in the top eight, had dismal, penalty-filled runs and ended up out of the Super Eights in ninth and 11th place respectively.