Piloting Dago Red, Skip Holm takes a wide line and pushes up the power another notch; the P-51's engine responds smoothly. Somewhere on the back side of the course Dago passes the Bear and begins to build a lead. John Penney's strategy was set before the race: don't exceed a chosen power setting, and hope the strain of the higher manifold pressure on the smaller engine in the P-51 begins to tell. Nobody expected a particularly fast heat, since these airplanes are here to win on Sunday and the engines have to hold together until then; but this is racing, and something remarkable is taking place in front of us.