Reno Crowd Agrees: “Best Race I Ever Saw!” (w/video)

[Machiavelli]

Linda Shiner
Air & Space Magazine
September 16, 2014

At the end of the closest race in the 51-year history of the National Championship Air Races, seven-time race champion Tiger Destefani came within a spinner’s length of stealing first place from rival and one-time protégé Steve Hinton. The photo finish ... came at the end of Saturday’s Unlimited Gold Race, run to determine positions for the final championship event the following day, Sunday, September 14. After flying a high course for all eight laps, Destefani, in the red-and-white Mustang Strega—which Destefani owns and Hinton flew to four straight Gold wins beginning in 2009—traded altitude for speed and plunged toward the finish line, pulling abreast of Hinton flying the evenly matched and exquisitely engineered Mustang Voodoo.

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[truth_seeker]

A neighbor's son builds carbon fiber planes for racing.

He got his start as a teenager, building skim boards first with old technology (wood, resin) and then experimenting with carbon fiber over a honeycomb core.

He turned it into a career and a business.

[flowers]

They used to show the Reno air races on the TV back in the day. Loved to watch them. Hubby knew a racer of a P-51 back in the day as well. He died while flying at the races some years ago. He had owned 2 of them. One was called Pegasus, later named Voodoo Chile. 

He used to house them at Gillespie field in El Cajon cali. Just a couple hangers down from my cousins. Had a chance to ride with him one day, said no. Sorry to this day I didn't. Love P-51s.

[flowers]

I see reading the history of Voodoo, it is the plane that Bill used to own.