The Red Bull Air Race is back once again in Abu Dhabi. The season opening round of Red Bull Air Race World Championship 2015 took off over the capital’s Corniche bay on mid February.
Photographic opportunities are huge because you can apply a variety of photographic techniques and different lenses to capture the most interesting moments of the race (in the true meaning of the word moment).
This time it was a real pleasure photographing this event because I had the opportunity to shoot the teaser flight from one of the best aerobatic airplanes – Extra 330LX. The feeling of flying in this plane is difficult to describe in words. After that, the next 3 days I photographed from a helicopter and that is also one of those photoshootings that will never fade from my memory. Total of 4-5 hours of flying over the amazing Abu Dhabi is definitely something I very much enjoyed.
The pilots use the fastest, most agile and lightweight racing planes to navigate a pre-defined, low-level aerial racetrack of air-filled pylons (air gates), with the aim of finishing in the fastest time possible and incurring as few penalties as they can. The eight-race 2015 championship will feature one new stop in Japan, along with a return to Budapest, Hungary, between February and October.
Racing took place over two days, with the final at the end of the weekend. The pilots’ times in the final training session determined the starting order for qualifying. Qualifying took place on February 13 and all the pilots were competing to qualify for the final rounds on Sunday. There were two qualifying sessions in which pilots tried to set their fastest time around the course.