Landscape or Portrait when you have lots of pixels?

Well, I’m kind of doing this because I get to start the first Sports Shooter thread and in part because I would like some feedback on the photos. I originally posted this set on the Canon 7D . . . forum as examples of what you can get with a 7D. Folks looked but nobody had anything to say.

What I did in the galleries was shoot 2 days of International Gravity Sports competition. The first day I shot everything in landscape mode. The second day I shot everything in portrait mode.

The 7D is an 18mpx camera so I was able to do some fairly serious cropping on the portrait mode files and still have enough image for a decent 8x10 printed image. I think I got more variety out of the portrait mode shots.

Below is a link to the “Event Page” for the 2011 Maryhill Festival of Speed, IGSA World Cup event.

longfellows.smugmug.com/event/2011-IGSA-Maryhill/Eo5HkjQfntpTU

There are many technique issues for this type of event which are evident in my photos. I am open to discuss any that are your priority. My initial purpose for this thread though is more focused on the landscape/portrait orientation when shooting and the resulting options for cropping out the best photo worthy of a print.