Reno Air Races

Yeah, way more fun, and a lot of anticipation here.

The Unlimited Class and the Sports Class both returned to the National Championship Air Races in Roswell, New Mexico.

Now they sat out the 2025 event because organizers needed a little bit more time to address some course hazards and emergency landing concerns that the pilots had at that new venue.

The Unlimiteds are really super popular because they feature P-51 Mustangs, and generally they're now competing on a 10-mile course that's been redesigned with less Gs And the four Gs versus six Gs, when it was in Reno, it was about six Gs.

Consult your local listing for the time of Wide World in your area.

And for you people here on the West Coast, just a reminder, coming up next on Wide World of Sports at 4:30 Pacific Standard Time, the National 500 stock car race from Charlotte, North Carolina, and the National Air Races from Reno.

Now from the 35, first down for Stanford.

[crowd cheering] Come on, go.

While attending high school in Switzerland, Lear became the youngest American to climb the Matterhorn in Zermatt.

In 1968, he pylon-raced a Douglas B-26 Invader in the Reno Air Races, the largest aircraft ever raced at Reno at the time.

At age 28, he was one of the youngest Boeing 707 captains to fly in commercial airline service.

A former Nevada State Senate candidate, John is the son of William P. Lear Sr., designer of the Learjet executive aircraft, the eight-track stereo, and founder of Lear Incorporated, now Lear Siegler Corporation, a large defense contractor.

He was a pilot in the 70s, one of the most popular books of the 70s.

And he claimed he bought his jet and then flew it in the Reno air races in 1980.

That seems outlandish.

He was in New Zealand.

You have to be there, and starting Wednesday, you can be there.

The National Championship Air Races return to Roswell, New Mexico this week, and the headline for year two is significant.

Sport class and unlimited class are both joining the program.

That's on top of five divisions already returning from last year's inaugural event.

It worked.

Racing happened.

The National Championship Air Races did not die.

But pilots and fans who'd grown up with the full Reno program noticed the gap.

It is not Sun and Fun.

It is not the Reno National Championship Air Races.

It is exactly the kind of air show that keeps general aviation alive in smaller cities, the kind where people show up because their neighbor flies, or their father brought them to this same air show when they were eight years old, or because they heard an engine and just started walking toward the sound.

Those air shows matter, maybe more than the big ones.

She's flown everything from historic World War II warbirds and the legendary B-17 Flying Fortress to business jets and vintage aircraft.

She's raced jets at the Reno Air Races, co-piloted the Collings Foundation's B-17, and today can often be found flying her beautifully restored World War II-era PT-13 Stearman.

Her acrobatic...

Buckard Youngman, I hope I'm saying that right, Bucher Youngman, and her classic Cessna 170.

Fagan was on his own.

Got into hanging out at the Reno National Championship Air Races.

I went there everywhere.

Folks took us there first in 1975 as kids.