DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Before the drivers start their engines, they look up.

The sound is almost as recognizable as the national anthem that plays before it. It’s Sunday February 14, 2021, the day of the Daytona 500, and six F-16 fighter jets are flying across the sky in formation.

They are the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds.  

“I can’t think of anything that goes together better than jets and racing,” Maj. Zane Taylor says.

Taylor is the right wingman in the unit and referred as No. 3. He’s one of eight pilots in the unit, but only six fly at one time.  

“It’s really a team effort you know,” Taylor says. “Everyone coordinating together.”

Taylor learned teamwork back at Edgewater High School in Orlando, where he played wide receiver and defensive back in the early 2000s and went to two straight state championship games. It takes the same kind of cooperation and selflessness to fly and maintain these F-16. Twenty-five different jobs and 130 men and women make up the Thunderbirds. Each person goes through some degree of flight training.

“You definitely have to go through some medical training,” Capt. Remoshay Nelson says. Nelson is a public affairs officer for the Thunderbirds.

“Learning how to do breathing techniques to help your body endure G-forces.”

The F-16s can travel around 1,000 mph and can accelerate more rapidly the faster they go. It can make a stock car look tame by comparison. However, last year, the coronavirus pandemic threatened to keep them on the ground.

“Like everyone else, COVID affected our show season,” Nelson says. “Unfortunately, most of our shows were canceled.”

As the Thunderbirds dealt with adversity and saw the rest of the country going through it, too, they wanted to provide some inspiration.

“One of the things we came up with was just fly over hospitals and major cities as a salute to front line workers,” Nelson says.

It started near their home base in Las Vegas. They eventually teamed up with the Navy’s Blue Angels and performed city and hospital flyovers all over the country. In total, the Thunderbirds performed fly overs in 13 major cities that included 248 hospitals.  

“We were honored to be a part of that mission and we hope that it was inspiring for the individuals who were able to view the fly over,” Nelson says. “Just to be able to look outside for 20 seconds to have some normalcy and inspiration.”

In August 2020, the Thunderbirds resumed socially distanced air shows. This year marks their 68th anniversary representing the U.S. Air Force. They are scheduled to perform 49 demonstrations in 27 locations. At events like the Daytona 500, they hoped to remind people to keep their head up.

Better days are ahead.

“We were just looking to be a beacon of hope, a beacon of light and some type of inspiration to not only the front line workers but the entire nation,” Nelson says.