Mike Goulian rounds a pylon in the Red Bull race in Abu Dhabi.

When some people get bored or restless, they’ll try a new hobby or a change in schedule. Then there’s Michael Goulian.

Goulian has performed in air shows for nearly two decades. But for the past two years he has participated in the Red Bull Air Race World Series, which pits the world’s best pilots in a NASCAR type of competition. The pilots fly fast—up to 250 mph—while doing precise aerobatic maneuvers through a series of pylon gates. The smallest miscue costs them penalty points and, likely, a place at the podium.

"Flying 25 air shows a year can become hard work and monotonous at times," he said. "Plus, I love to compete. The air races don’t have anything to do with aerobatic flying. It’s a different discipline, and the hardest things I’ve ever done in an airplane."

The racetrack is almost impossible to fly the first day, but by the third day things start coming into place, he said.

Still, flying in the Red Bull series is a technical challenge. "You’re always trying to shave a second off your time, so you’re analyzing how you did against others and yourself," Goulian said.

While flying air races takes a different mind-set than flying air shows, the hardest thing about the Red Bull races is traveling and dealing with multiple time zones, Goulian said.

"The time change is really the biggest problem for the American pilots," he said. "To get to Abu Dhabi I flew 14 hours nonstop, and there was a nine-hour time difference."

Then, once there, they begin the process to reassemble the plane before he can practice.

For this race season, Goulian is flying an Edge 540 instead of his Extra. In fact, 11 of the 13 pilots are flying the Edge this season, and many have made modifications to make their planes even faster. It’s made the competition much closer, with no one pilot consistently coming out on top.

"Two years ago, the top four or five pilots were 12 seconds apart," Goulian said. "Now we’re two or three seconds apart." At most.

But Extra just designed a racer that is very fast. And with Nicolas Ivanoff just getting one, the races should continue to get even more competitive, Goulian predicts.

A change in format also has made the races more dangerous than last year. "Everybody flies too much on the last day," he said. "You are flying five flights in a day, and even if the race is only 1-1/2 minutes, it’s the longest 1-1/2 minutes you can imagine. Plus, when you’re fighting g-forces of 10 or so around tight circles, you’re always fighting against blackout."

But Goulian said the format will likely be changed next year to something with which the pilots are more comfortable. And, while he doubts it will happen next year, Goulian says he continues to push Red Bull to have some type of race at AirVenture.

"I couldn’t imagine a better place to have it."

While you won’t see him race at EAA AirVenture, you can see Michael Goulian perform today, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday during the afternoon air show.