Pilots: Red Bull Challenger

Before he became the junior pilot on the Red Bull air racing circuit this year, he was the youngest pilot on the U.S. Advanced Aerobatic Team (at age 19). Prior to that, he soloed 10 different airplanes on his sixteenth birthday, and a glider on his fourteenth.

“I really don’t think much about my age,” said Mason, 25, “because the racing itself requires all my focus. It’s unreal to do the stuff air racing allows us to do.”

The fact that Mason is so quick to reach aviation milestones seems at odds with his unhurried nature. The Californian grew up surfing, skateboarding, and riding BMX bikes near his home in Santa Paula, and he brings the laid-back sensibilities of those pursuits to flying.

But aviation is deep in Mason’s DNA. His grandfather, also Sammy Mason, was a pioneering Lockheed test pilot, airshow performer, and flight instructor who performed the first loops and rolls ever in a helicopter. His parents, Pete and Rowena Mason, are both accomplished pilots and aircraft restorers, and their son’s best childhood friends were fellow airport kids at Santa Paula.

Red Bull Challenger pilots such as Mason compete in two identical Edge 540s—ultra-high-performance composite aircraft that are a far cry from the Piper Cub, Stearman biplane, and Pitts S–1S that Mason and his family own. In preparing for the air races, however, Mason said the slower, less-responsive, old-school airplanes did him a great service.

“Flying fast means flying coordinated, especially at low level,” he said. “A Cub, a Stearman, and a Pitts obviously can’t go nearly as fast or pull as much G as an Edge—but they teach you a lot about coordination.”

Mason is type rated in Embraer Phenom 300 and Lear 45 corporate jets and flies them professionally from nearby Van Nuys Airport. This year, he plans to compete in Red Bull races in Russia and Indianapolis, Indiana.

“I always wanted to fly in the Red Bull Air Races but I didn’t know how to get into them,” he said.

As it turned out, all it took was becoming one of the youngest aerobatic performers at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, in 2015, and an invitation to a Red Bull training camp followed in 2017.

“The experience has been super fun,” he said. “You practice things like hitting pylons and recovering from high-G stalls at 500 feet. It’s like nothing else I’ve ever done.”