(click pic for hi-res) Thom Richard and Precious Metal on the Unlimited Gold race takeoff
With a 2,050 mile drive ahead of me, I left the 2014 Reno Air Races just minutes after the Gold race on Sunday. But I stopped about an hour down the road to post a picture to celebrate that I watched Precious Metal easily capture third place behind another win for Steven Hinton (in Voodoo) with Sheman Smoot in Czech Mate taking second place... Strega was unable to race and Rare Bear was out of the race after just one lap. But when I checked the race results at reports.airrace.org I saw that they were showing Precious Metal disqualified in the Gold race with this note: "DQ by Contest Committee for showline cut".
Uncertain of what was going on and confused by how such a thing could have happened, I decided to just continue home and post once I understood the situation. I'm home now and I still don't understand how Precious Metal was disqualified (which moved Dennis Sanders and Dreadnought into third place) and in fact my quick research of the situation makes me think there is a really big mistake taking place here. Hopefully soon there will be some info available that will either clarify what really happened, or maybe even reverse the situation.
Regardless, Team Precious Metal did a fantastic job of getting the airplane into the Gold race and they have so much to proud of for their efforts. It was a great experience for me to be so close to the action in the PM pit, and I can verify that the team worked really hard and effectively in the quest for the Gold race.
I'll have more info on this confusing situation once it's available.