Unlimited Gold Air Racing
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by user Erooster
For the uninitiated, the Unlimited Class is made up of mostly highly modified and stock World War II fighters. There have been other planes in the class, like the ill-fated Pond Racer. But officially, the class is described as; “The Unlimited Class is open to any piston-driven aircraft with an empty weight greater than 4500 pounds [the weight restriction was added in 2005]. Aside from a very few "scratch-built" aircraft, the Unlimited Class has generally been populated by stock or modified WWII fighters, the most-often-flown types including the P-51 Mustang, F-8F Bearcat, and Hawker Sea Fury. Aircraft speeds in the Unlimited Class reach 500 mph.”
The race course is set up primarily over the north section of the Reno/Stead airport, with the distance of the course set at 8.4803 miles.
The Unlimited Class is often referred to as, “The Bad Boys of Racing”, among air race enthusiasts. Generally, the pilots are pushing their speeds and equipment far faster and harder than the manufacturer recommends.
This year, the qualifying and racing was no different. The Unlimited Class was fraught with many hurdles, a little sandbagging, and more than one blown engine. Through one problem or another, all of the favorites were eliminated from competing through the end of the race on Sunday Sept 17.
On Monday Sept 11 the qualifying got underway. Merlin’s Magic was the first casualty of the week with a blown engine. The swing arm snapped broke the piston and sliced a hole through the $150,000 Rolls Royce Merlin engine’s oil pan. Unfortunately, the team only brought one racing engine and was forced to qualify and race on their ferry motor.
On Tuesday, the first favorite had problems when Dago Red had a similar incident to Merlin’s Magic. The Dago race engine blew a hole in the side of the engine. The team replaced engines on Tuesday night, to qualify on Wednesday before racing started at noon. However, the back-up race engine started to create metal, as there were shavings in the screens. Dago Red was unable to qualify and sat in the pits throughout the races.
The Rare Bear race team also suffered failure on Tuesday and into Wednesday with engine problems as well. The team blew the Wright R3350 at the end of qualifying on Tuesday. However, the team could not fix the engine and the Bear sat in its pit or back in its cave throughout the races.
Three other teams also suffered engine problems throughout the week. Team Voodoo, Team Cloud Dancer, and Team Strega added to the blown Merlin engines. The Voodoo engine started to create metal on Saturday. Cloud Dancer and Strega made it to the finals on Sunday, but Dancer pulled out before the start and Strega called “Mayday’’ on the next to last lap.
The Sunday final matched the two planes named above and seven other aircraft. The others were all powered by radial engines. Six of the aircraft were Hawker Seafuries and one was a modified Yak-3.
Going into the final, the clear favorite all week had the pole position, September Fury. September Fury had the fastest qualifying speed at 487 mph and led the preliminary races throughout the week. In the second position sat Dreadnought, another Seafury, powered by the huge 4360 engine. In the third spot was “The Giant Killer” otherwise known as Chech Mate, the Yak-3. In fourth, sat the Seafury Riff Raff, fifth, the Seafury Spirit of Texas, sixth, the Seafury Furias, seventh, the Seafury Southern Cross, followed by the P-51 Strega and the P-51 Cloud Dancer.
September Fury led from start to finish, but Strega made it close early by passing the remaining field on the first lap. However, ‘’Tiger’’ had no answer for the fast moving Fury. Ultimately, his chase ended with a blown engine.
The field pretty much held form throughout the race.
This was Mike Brown’s first win in the Unlimited Gold race. He and the crew of September Fury have come a long way in just a few short years.
Date
Sat 09/23/06, 12:47 am EST
