Canadian Red Bull Air Race pilot Pete McLeod has been tearing up the circuit in the past few races and is firmly in contention to win the championship this year.

As of late July, McLeod was just two points out of first place in the overall standings after after second and third-place finishes in Kazan, Russia and Budapest. McLeod has consistently been the fastest pilot in recent races and earned the second-place finish at Budapest despite a two-second penalty. If he hadn’t messed up a pylon entry, he would have won the race by 1.3 seconds, an eternity in the razor-thin margins that normally decide the races.

“We’ve got the plane where we want it and we’re not stopping, we’re going to keep moving with it,” he said. “But I’m flying great. I feel good in the raceplane.

McLeod has lagged in the standings for a couple of years because of an underperforming engine. That forced him to fly even more aggressively and resulted in penalties that kept him off the podium in most races.

He said he’s now found the balance between fast and smooth and hopes to convert that into consistently high finishes.