It’s always my pleasure to visit my neighbouring country Hungary, and experiencing Budapest is a true cultural delight for me! Amazing architecture of wonderful buildings, castles and bridges is inevitable background of the Red Bull Air Race in Budapest. Photography possibilities are literally endless and Hungarian Parliament building as a background is something to wish for.
As one of the most popular locations, the Hungarian capital always pulls in a monumental crowd to witness the racing action. More than 650,000 spectators lined the banks of the Danube between Elizabeth and Margaret Bridges, right in front of the Parliament building. It’s big privilege to fly in helicopter above large cities and enjoy this remarkable race from the air.
Budapest is a true spectacle on the race calendar due to the unique start for the Master Class pilots. They begin their run into the track by flying under the iconic Chain Bridge – something that must be seen with your own eyes.
Split across the Danube, it’s a city of two halves – Buda and Pest. The iconic backdrop of the neogothic Parliament building on the Pest side of the river offers fans a stunning panoramic view of the action. On the Buda side of the city, you’ll find the Statue of Liberty, on top of Gellért Hill, along with the Citadel. This is why Budapest is regularly featured in the Top 10 list of World’s Best Cities.
Moreover, the photoshooting possibilities extend even more with the view of Buda castle and Statue of Liberty, and of course the renowned Chain Bridge as a start line.
Martin Sonka showed that you should never count him out by taking a fantastic win in Budapest with a time of 57.502s. Mika Brageot was second, Matt Hall third and Michael Goulian fourth.
It’s not just the race teams in the Red Bull Air Race World Championship that are always marching forward with new technology, the internal teams are always trying to give you, the fan, the best experience possible when watching the ultimate motorsport series in the sky. One of these features is the Ghost Plane.
When the Red Bull Air Race returned in 2014 there was a need to show which pilot was winning in the head to heads, but as two raceplanes are unable fly the track at the same time something from the virtual world had to be invented.
Netventure and other technical providers and suppliers such as Tellumat and Race Time Pro work with the Red Bull Air Race on producing the coverage during a race weekend and also create the graphics used. When Netventure was approached by Red Bull Air Race to create a virtual raceplane, nothing like this had been done before, so the team had to invent a new system. “The Red Bull Air Race wanted a visual way to explain to the fans how the head to head works, and as we are unable to fly two planes in the course at the same time they asked us to invent something to show in a graphical way who is leading and who is behind,” said Stefan Meyer, Managing Director of Netventure.
Something like this had never been done before. The closest reference Netventure had was from other sports such as swimming where the broadcasters place the World Record line above the pool so you can see if it is going to be broken. “But it was just a line, there was nothing 3-D so we had to invent something completely new. We needed to make sure the virtual plane was in the exact position, so it’s much more advanced than just a line,” explained Meyer.