Sunday. That’s payday in air racing, so we can expect to see all it can be today.
In preparation for today’s racing, a review of Saturday’s highlights should help. Easily the most unusual was in the rear of the Formula 1 ranks, where the rag-and-tube slab wings do their thing. During their Saturday heat race, all went to plan, and leader Trent Woodworth, flying Feisty, zoomed up and off the course at the end of the race.
Only it wasn’t the end of the race, but the white flag lap. And everyone except last place—that would be Houston Pye in Monkey Ninja—followed Woodworth off the course. Oops. Observant but pokey Pye kept going through lap 7, making him the only official finisher. All the rest were scored as DNF (did not finish).
While this could be a first in modern pylon racing and is sure to provide endless joke fodder in the F1 ranks, it’s an all-too-easy mistake. Woodworth no doubt saw a flag waving at start-finish and thought it was the checkered flag, and once he pulled up, it was monkey see, monkey do. Except for Monkey Ninja.
We’re sure order will be restored in today’s F1 Silver contest.
In Unlimited, Miss America, flown by Dr. Brent Hisey, was an early Mayday in the Gold heat. This also turned out to be another unprecedented issue: a rudder cable jammed. This was easily enough fixed, said an insider, but the crew elected to run a gear retract just to make sure nothing else had come adrift. Look for the red, white, and blue P-51 in today’s Unlimited Gold.
In Sport, front-runner Peter Balmer had a cracked pipe in his turbo plumbing, so he sat out Saturday’s heat race in favor of welding. His aircraft, Race 44, was test-flying in the early evening, so look for this favorite to start the Sport Gold race today.
Multiple Sport racers run nitrous oxide, but sometimes circumstances around the finicky gas make that difficult, and then it’s not unusual for the competitors to make a gentleman’s agreement on running it or not. This time, the limited supply of nitrous oxide in the Roswell area was sufficient for only one hungry Sport engine, so everyone decided Joe Coraggio could have it all. Which is rather sporting, as that means Coraggio will gain over 100 hp from running naturally aspirated.
This also meant Coraggio’s crew spent the evening cramming nitrous into ice-chilled bottles, as speedy Pete Balmer in Race 44 has asked to run the Sport Gold on the Unlimited course to keep G-loads down. That means a longer race, right on the edge of Coraggio’s nitrous range, hence the need to get as much of the squeeze on board as possible.
In the single T-6 race today, Lee Oman in Eric Woelbing’s Miss TNT is the odds-on favorite, as he has led all three heat races leading up to today. He joins Steve Hinton in Unlimited as expected winners for the weekend.
And in STOL Drag, newcomer—we hesitate to call him a rookie considering his extensive ground-based motorsport background—Ronnie Saner is looking awfully strong in his Yamaha-powered Badlands Traveler. With 10,800 rpm (not a typo) and a ton of turbo boost at his disposal, fans are guaranteed a screaming good time in any event.
