Lukasz
Czepiela
Poland
·
Aerobatic Flying
Date of birth | June 8, 1983 |
|---|---|
Birthplace | Rzeszów, Poland |
Age | 42 |
Nationality | Poland |
Career start | 2006 |
Disciplines | Aerobatic Flying / Air Racing |
Poland’s first Red Bull Air Race pilot, Łukasz Czepiela, caught the aviation bug at the age of six when his father took him to see an air show held in Jasionka near Rzeszów, Poland.
What fascinated the little boy so much were the aerobatics performed in the Zlin 50 aircraft by the 14-time Polish Champion and World Aerobatic champion, Janusz Kasperek.
Czepiela started cycling to the airport to clean aircrafts. As a teenager, he helped push the machines out of the hangar, and in return, pilots took him flying. Soon, thanks to the money earned from demolishing an old hangar, he got his glider licence and started flying. He was spending as much time mid-air as possible despite his family’s limited financial resources.
After graduating from school, Czepiela moved to the UK, where he started working two jobs, putting in 12-14 hours a day in order to earn the money for an aerobatics course. When he was taking care of the Honda Dream Team aircrafts, the team leader agreed to help him with aerobatic training. A few years later, Czepiela became his successor, and that’s how his aviation sports career took off.
Since 2010, Czepiela has participated in Red Bull's acrobatic training camps. But the Red Bull Air Race World Championship was on a hiatus at the time, so he joined the Polish national team and the Żelazny aerobatics team, enjoying both small and big wins at the national and international levels and performing at air shows.
In 2013, Czepiela started participating in other training camps, which allowed him to make his debut at the World Championship the same year, where he placed in the middle of the stakes. It was enough to secure further special training, in which the most talented pilots of the younger generation from all over the world learned to navigate between 25m air gates and earned their Limited Super Licences to compete in the new form of air racing: the Challenger Cup.
In the meantime, Czepiela gained a professional licence and worked as a commercial pilot for the European airline Wizz Air. He took a year out in 2015, but in 2016 he earned four podiums, including a first race win, which came at the USA’s Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Five more podiums followed in 2017, including one race win, and that consistency resulted in his career-high third-place finish overall.
The following year, in a dramatic finale of the 2018 season in Fort Worth, USA, Czepiela narrowly beat his closest competitor by 0.052 seconds to win the 2018 Red Bull Air Race Challenger Cup.
When it comes to aerobatic flying, Czepiela has never limited himself to just sport. In 2017, accompanied by Martin Šonka, he flew under three bridges in Warsaw, Poland – right above the surface of the Vistula River. The planes generated symbolic white and red smoke to celebrate Polish Flag Day. Two years later, he kicked off the tourist season in the Polish resort of Sopot with an even more breathtaking spectacle: landing on a wooden pier.
Czepiela also hosts his own aerial sports talk show in his native Polish, which sees him interviewing notable personalities as he takes them for a spin in various aircraft.