As a belated birthday present my wife got us tickets for the Promoter Club hospitality lounge for both the Saturday (practise day) and Sunday (race day). We both had a fantastic time, although it was a struggle to moderate my intake from the “all you can eat and drink buffet and bar” and still remain sufficiently sober to attempt some half decent photos!!

I’m just posting a few photos from Saturday for now (I haven’t even looked at Sunday’s yet). These have been edited on a less than ideal laptop in Hungary, so please be forgiving for any exposure / colour balance imperfections.

If there’s interest I’ll post more when I return to Blighty … 😊

Awesome pictures!. As are all your posts

Nice job! How long was your lens? They are damn small buggers...

great shots Eric, must have been tough tracking them whipping around like that!

Terrific shots, bad laptop or not. I'm surprised at how dirty that green number 11 is. Is that a modified Xtra 300? Pilots usually get their airplanes looking pristeen for these events. Looks as though it needs a new coat of paint. Guess he's too busy flying to worry about it.

That Green 11 is done weathered on purpose, me thinks

Cool aircraft, first acro plane I've ever seen with Winglets.

http://www.breitlingracingteam.com/en/breitling-racing-team/mikael-brageot

Hi guys,
thanks for all the comments and I'm glad you like the photos

I'm back in Blighty now but ... home broadband isn't working so I can't upload any more pictures at the moment (responding to your comments from my phone).

piper - you're too kind!

RSColonel_131st - I took these photos using a Canon 7DMkII camera with a 100-400mm lens. However, above 300mm the focusing on this lens is very soft so I always try to stay below 300mm.

TopGun - Panning was tricky as the aircraft rarely flew a predictable path for more than a couple of seconds (if you were lucky!) before executing a sharp turn or roll. When sorting through my photos I also noticed that I had far fewer 'keepers' in the half hour or so after I'd had a drink from the bar (which isn't that surprising, but the scale of the impact was more than I'd have guessed).

Pooch - Green 11 (which is an MXS-R) had a shiny new paint job that deliberately looked 'worn & dirty' (as RSColonel_131st stated). I actually quite liked it ...

Cheers for now

Great shots! Thanks for sharing.

Fantastic shots, so much energy in each one of them !

Yes, the Danube is a rather large river but I'm still amazed those races are allowed in such a crowded environment.

Cheers,
Slug

Nixer, Sluggish Controls, thanks for the feedback

Here's a few more photos, starting with a few to give the Health & Safety folk palpatations ...

Japanese Master Class pilot Yoshihide Muroya flying towards the Margaret Bridge:




... followed by French Master Class pilot François Le Vot:




... and finally Czech Master Class pilot Petr Kopfstein




On the Race Day itself I ventured out from the Promotor's Lounge to mingle with the riff-raff outside I got as far as the Margaret Bridge from where I took these photos:

















Then back to the Promotor's Lounge and the resident eye candy ...

Hair up on the Saturday ...



Hair down on the Sunday ...

Could you post a few more of the last motive? Just to properly judge the sharpness of the lens...

Very good tracking skills. Like the blurred BG and prob you got there. The facades in the background add to the pics...