Pannonia-Ring with Valentinos Trackdays – Report

So this happened! My buddy Joel who rides a Motorcycle and has been pressuring me into getting one myself for the last three years, called me up and asked if I wanted to join him on a 10hour drive down to nowhereland somewhere in Hungary and take some pictures of him and other riders blasting around the Pannonia-Ring. Since I had just gotten my new camera, nothing better to do and have never made pictures of bikes before, I happily agreed.

After a very long drive, we arrived very late on Thursday night and immediately went into our Box. We shared it with Christina, the woman running Valentinos and her boyfriend Jonny. Joel immediately went and started fitting the parts we bought before we left Switzerland.

Christina also brought her dog Nala with her. A young pretty little beast. Each day after the riders were done with their turns, we took her out onto the track for a track walk or little race with an E-Scooter.

The track itself was prety dissappointing from a photographers point of view: it was basically a huge lawn with no bushes, trees or other nature around. Also, if there were barriers, they were completely covered in tires (which turned out to be a good thing at some points, but still). The only trees/bushes were not on the track-area itself and the only non-covered barrier was on the start-finish straight. So i could get some interesting shots as the three days went on, but overall, I would not return to the track in my free time just because the possibilites are way too limited.

But ey, I gotta learn to shoot tracks like this, not everyone is located in beautiful scenery and forests.

Day 1

The more the first day went on, the more comfortable the riders got and you could tell by their lines, speed and driving. Also, I got to grip with the limitations I had and got some decent shots. A plus was that the marshall could not be asked to do anything other than wave a red flag once a turn was over, so I had no problems getting onto the grass right besides the track. Obviously, I am responsible for my actions and threfore only went to thos areas in the inside of turns because if you crash on a bike, you’re going to slide towards the outside.

The temperatures were through the roof and because there were no trees, shadow was inexistent.

Day 2

Day 2 was a bit better: less heat meaning more riders on track. I tried to step up in creativity a bit and decided to dedicate 30mins to a training session in panning. So I turned my shutter speed down all the way between 1/20 to 1/10. I started with very small focal lenght because the further away the subject, the less movement is necessary to track it meaning less to go wrong. One i got more and more comfortable and more and more shots got decent, I switched out the lenses and put on my 70-300mm.

Of course thre were alot of missed shots. But overall, it was worth it. Also, after the lunch-break some riders came up to me asking if I could go into some certain corners or focus on certain details. So they started to take corners deeper and more aggressive and I tried my best to equal their efforts with somewhat interesting compositions and setups.

Day 3

Day 3 I was determined to get the shots in I planned before arriving at the track: through the batrriers and through the trees… And if you have read this far, you will know, that was almost impossible. So I packed my stuff and left the circuit to go up this little hill where I could see the final parts of the lap through some leaves and sticks. So what I did was the following: I put on my 70-300 lens and went as low with the aperture as I could without overexposing the image. Because the shutter speed was set between 1/25 to 1/10 in order to make the sticks and leaves only slightly visible as dark and green mist.

Also, i went onto the pit straight becaue I wanted that armco shot, even though it was set to be rather boring because of the lack of lean angle on a straight. But I managed to get it in and therefore can say that I managed to pull off what I wanted to.

All in all, it was a great epeience. Especially because Christina was very impressed with my work and offered me to work together with Valentinos more often in the future. So i will return to Misano with them mid-August and will be on track with them as often as I can depending on what is going on with my exams.

Thanks to Joel for taking me with you, to Christina and Jonny for the great time and atmosphere off track and the riders for their positive feedback.

Next up, I will spend about 1.5 weeks in Belgium that will end with the Total Energies 24h of Spa.

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