As the aviation nerd I am, I´m apparently not able to stay away from airplanes even when I´m not working. I managed to catch one of the races of the Red Bull Air Race World Series this year as well.
This year I had the pleasure of experiencing the race in Budapest, with high speed fun along the Danube river which runs through the center of the Hungarian capital. This was race number 6 this year of the total 9 world wide, and around 600 000 people showed up to watch the race.
I flew down to Budapest on Tuesday with Knut Erik. We saw some of the qualifying round while we were out exploring the city. Wednesday was the actual race, with a number of displays in between. We sat down at a restaurant by the Danube before the race and ate some Gulash while watching some of the displays. Amongst others the Breitling Jet Team who fly aerobatics with the L-39 Albatross.
The Flying Bulls had a display in their Czech aerobatic planes (Zlin 50LX apparently) and with some good old planes like the B-25 Mitchell and the F-4U Corsair. The Hungarian airline Malev came flying down the river at low altitude in one of their 737s. In addition to a couple of helicopter dispays, an Extra 300 did some stuff I didn´t know airplanes could do...
The Austrian Hannes Arch won the race (his first victory) in front of the two Brits Steve Jones and Paul Bonhomme. Mike Mangold, who sat a couple of rows in front of us on our flight to Munich was number 4, while the Hungarian Peter Besenyei came in at 5th.
See video from the racet at aftenposten.no
It was the national day of Hungary on Wednesday too, but we were kind of disappointed that the Hungarian people were not celebrating the day anyway close to how the us Norwegians celebrate our. Although they did have a fireworks display and we did find some people celebrating after a while...
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Red Bull Air Race
Half Cuban 8 halfway each round
A satisfied Mikkel on the bridge after the race
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