The Red Bull Air Race World Championship series heads to Cannes this weekend for what will be the first round ever held in France.
Since it started in 2003, RBAR has been to 23 different countries including Australia, but never France, which currently has five pilots in the competition: Nicolas Ivanoff, Francois Le Vot and Mika Brageot in the Master Class, and Melanie Astles and Baptiste Vignes in the Challenger Class.
Sunday's race around the French Riviera playground town has the local pilots excited about the prospects of flying a home race after many years of waiting.
"I've been waiting 15 years for this," Ivanoff said. "I'm very excited about the race, I'm feeling a little bit nervous because I want to do well. But if I have a good race I want it to be here."
Le Vot, who lives near Cannes, is also pleased to be racing at home. "Finally we're here racing in France! That is a great feeling," he told Red Bull media. "We've been worrying and wondering why we couldn't have a race here before, but now we have, so the main feeling is happiness.
"I'm proud to be racing in front of the French public. We have a lovely location, the mountains, the city and the sea."
Australian pilot Matt Hall is no less keyed-up for this weekend's race, keen to improve on his fifth place in Round One at Abu Dhabi in February. Hall and his team have used the 10-week layoff to make changes to his Edge 540 to correct a handling problem.
“We had issues with the plane in the first race. It had a new paint scheme and as a result the tail was quite heavy, which made it sensitive to pitch and that led to some over-Gs [which results in a DNF],” Hall said.
“So, it’s been a busy time between races, even though two months have passed. We have reduced the weight out of the tail and hopefully at this stage, the plane looks to be handling better and over-G should not be a risk for us.
"We have also cleaned up the leading edges of the wings, so it hangs on a bit tighter through the corners. Fingers crossed we have made it slightly faster, but also more manoeuvrable.”
Hall also believes the new Cannes track will present some challengers to all pilots competing on Sunday.
“This track is going to be reasonably fast, and there will be some interesting lines, with some over-G potential," he said. "The big win and lose moves will be around who can negotiate the big vertical turns best.
“However, there are some interesting single pylons out there that guys will have to get around efficiently.”
Hall sits fifth in the championship standings behind American Michael Goulian, Japan's Yoshi Muroya, the USA's Kirby Chambliss and Czech Martin Sonka.
The second round of the 2018 Red Bull Air Race World Championship begins with qualifying on Saturday 21 April at midnight AEST, with the Round of 14 scheduled to start at 10.00 pm AEST on Sunday.