https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbr8KL90aa8
Almost any pilot with or without a G suits will start showing the effects of G-LOC at 8+ Gs in a very short time. Survival of that type of maneuvering relies as much on muscle memory and rote action as much as ground clearance and precision of maneuvering.
Around 1986 my Daughter and I attended the air show in Tulsa.
After a while I got tired and we went to the edge of the crowd and sat down on some broken concrete sections. We were only around 20 feet from a hot dog stand.
While we were there several Thunderbird cars pulled up to the stand and the Thunderbird pilots got out and bought hot dogs.
Not more than 10 minutes later, they drove back to the F-16s and got into the cockpits. Yes they ate hot dogs just before performing. They were not wearing G suits, just nice T-bird overalls.
That's really odd, I wonder if it is something they just started doing?
An old friend of mine has a son that was a pilot in the Air Force. Many years ago his son was trying to ‘make’ the Thunderbirds. The Air Force was just changing over to the F-16 for the Thunderbirds. This was in the early 90’s. He said his son told him that the F-16 had such better maneuverability than the T-38s that they decided not to wear suits. He said that was what washed his son out of the program. He just could not take the sustained higher Gs without a suit.
Maybe the Air Force thought better of it and kept the suit.