14 Pix From 2012 Reno Air Races (Thru Sunday Morning 9-16-12)
Sunday, September 16, 2012 at 02:13PM 
(click pic to enlarge) September Fury and Hoot Gibson in Heat 2A on Friday at Reno
(14 pix - click any pic to enlarge)
It's been an awesome Reno Air Races thus far and we've got the big races going on yet today. I tend to keep my focus on the Unlimited Class, and once again we find Strega controlling the racing. Yesterday's Heat 3A finished with the same order of Strega, September Fury, Rare Bear, Precious Metal and Dreadnought in the top five slots. Remarkably, everyone finished with almost the exact speeds that they all ran in Friday's Heat 2A. The speed spread runs from Strega right around 472 mph on down to Dreadnought at around 420 mph.
Based on what I've seen so far concerning the qualifying speeds seen earlier in the week from the various aircraft, along with the strategy of the teams over these last few races, it's fairly safe to say that this could be a fantastic Unlimited Gold race later today. Strega is strong as always and appears to have more speed if needed... but the other aircraft have shown the potential to be able to give some serious chase when it's needed. There's some real competition potential here. It's gonna be great.
Following is a collection of pix from the last few days... there's not enough time to share a lot of details now so you'll just get some captions along with one more encouragement from me to get to started right now making plans for next year and the 50th anniversary of the Reno Air Races - September 11-15, 2013.
Get Reno Air Race results on this RARA page
Precious Metal and Thom Richard in yesterday's Unlimited Gold Heat 3A (4th place)
Strega and Steven Hinton in yesterday's Unlimited Gold Heat 3A race (1st place)
Big props and big spinners! A row of awesome Sea Fury's in the pit area at Reno 2012
Speaking of the Sea Fury and a big spinner: September Fury up close... really close!
Rare Bear can play the big prop / big spinner game too! I love these airplanes : )
Rare Bear engine test run on Saturday on the ramp. Long live the propeller!
The F7F Tigercat never wins but wow is it ever a beautiful airplane to see race at Reno!
I'm finally getting better pix from that amazing press perk of 'pylon shooting' - go RENO!
Jeff LaVelle in his nearly 400mph Glasair III in yesterday's Sport Heat 3A (1st place)
Sweet Dreams, the wood GP-5 with Lee Behel in yesterday's Sport Heat 3A (3rd place)
Sweet Dreams earlier in the week getting lots of love to go faster and faster
A look inside the cockpit of the Chevy V-8 powered, wooden GP-5 Sport Class racer
Kevin Eldredge's Relentless: taller fin but no turbochargers this year, but watch out 2013!
Reader Comments (3)
Thanks a million for sharing these, Martt !! Great job, as usual.
Gary- thanx for the compliment... more to come tomorrow : )
And congrats to Team Strega for winning Reno Unlimited Gold in 2012 : )
Great pics from a great race week! awesome work :)
I was disappointed with Precious Metal having to pull out, but was still a great race to watch, here's lookin' at 2013!