Championship air racing in Reno is finished after 59 years, interrupted just twice by the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and Covid in 2020. The curtain fell on this storied spectacle on a doubly forlorn and somber note, struck not only by its own conclusion but also, on the final day, by the collision of two T-6s positioning to land after the class Gold final race. Chris Rushing and Nick Macy perished, and further racing was canceled, so the final checkered flag never fell on the Jet and Unlimited classes—the event’s biggest draw.
Ever since the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority (RTAA) announced in March that the races this September would be the last at Reno, the question has been why now, 12 years after the horrific P-51D crash that killed 10 spectators in 2011.
Last year, the RTAA’s insurance carrier declined to issue the rider that had thus far covered the races. RTAA in turn required the Reno Air Racing Association (RARA) to obtain a rider for the races; RARA complied, and its annual insurance premium grew by $500,000 to almost $1.3 million. The RTAA press release made no mention of the authority’s inability to obtain the insurance rider, and cited “challenging economic conditions, rapid area development, public safety and the impact on the Reno-Stead Airport.” There has been speculation that Stead is ripe for expansion as an air cargo hub.
Beyond these local risk/benefit issues, another cause for concern among fans has been the dwindling number of wealthy individuals with the passion to spend the huge amounts of money and time it takes to field a competitive Unlimited race plane and team. Tied to this concern is the purse size, inadequate as an incentive.
But there are bright spots offering hope to those wanting to see the world’s fastest motorsport adapt, develop, and grow elsewhere. The final Reno, held this past September 13-17, drew an enthusiastic response. Attendance was up this year by 30 to 40 percent on the figures for the decade, according to RARA COO Tony Logoteta, who added, “Our rough estimate as of late September is 140,000 attendees.” The competition landscape this year continued shifting, and across the paddock, teams innovated and maneuvered to fly faster, shorter, and sharper than ever.
In September, AIN received the opportunity to join and document what was billed as “The National Championship Air Races and Air Show: Final Flag at Reno.” For context, I’d done the same in 2016 with my father, Nigel, an expert aviation editor, including for AIN, journalist, and author-photographer of the celebrated 1982 book Reno: Air Racing Unlimited. Dad used to like waking my sister and me on Saturday mornings in the early/mid-1990s with hi-fi recordings of Rolls-Royce Merlin start-ups and low fly-bys of P-51s and Spitfires blaring out from massive Klipsch speakers in the living room.
Nostalgia and Expectations
Returning this year for sunset on the Reno spectacle, I perhaps harbored unreasonable expectations amidst unwitting nostalgia. Joining me was a first-time air races attendee with a strong aviation/powerplant background. Together we’d blend expertise (his) and amateurism (mine), new and old eyes and ears, and a shared love of everything flying. Joining us in absentia and personified by gaping shoes to fill was my father, erring cautiously back home in the face of a resurgent Covid (which I arrived and was sidelined with until Friday, race day).
The weather was perfect, sunny with some mixed light clouds keeping things from getting too hot. Nevertheless, wing shade was premium real estate across the tarmac of the pits, as usual. The sweet scents of fuels and oils and other engine fluids sank deep into our clothes. Beyond the aromas was the crescendo of noises at Reno. The intensity of the sounds built with the sunlight, beginning at ASMR levels with the twist of socket wrenches, muted conversation, and coffee sips in the predawn walkaround hours.
With sunrise, like clockwork, came the call of the daily F/A-18 and F-35 roosters to banish any surviving slumber across the North Valleys. Sleek taildraggers began wheeling out of hangars and pit stalls; Formulas headed for heats and Sports for warm-ups and testing. Droning O-200s pierced the cool blue mornings and, as sun-soaked warmth tiptoed across the tarmac, the rumble of radials and the deep hum of big V12s began shaking the earth.
When the machinery took to the sky, the grumbling growl of R2800s reverberated inside your ribs and the roaring scream of a Merlin or the mechanical symphony of a Centaurus drew every neuron to rapt attention. By 11 each morning, the aural schedule became six uninterrupted hours of hammer-down engine roaring, punctuated by jet and military demos. If you consider yourself an aero nut and you have not heard, with your own ears, sinuses, and lungs a Bristol Centaurus at full chatter or a Rolls-Royce Merlin developing twice its World War II horsepower, you must make it a priority.
The Unlimited class best epitomizes the decline of this cherished competition. It’s the pinnacle of the sport, and yet this year it was difficult to watch the current races and not think, “Man, this must have been awesome when there was a deeper field of competition.” Everywhere you turned there were reminders of a more exciting era, when heavily modified monsters like Rare Bear, Strega, Voodoo, Miss Ashley II, Precious Metal, and Super Corsair (with a 71-liter Pratt & Whitney R4360 with 28 cylinders in four rows) pushed the envelope. But they have all steadily vanished from the pylons.
Full Circle for Bardahl Special
This year, the Bardahl Special P-51 (N2869D, which competed at the Sky Ranch races in 1964) paid homage to the monsters of yore, in the skilled hands of Steven Hinton (son of long-time Reno fixture Steve), who reached 469 mph on his fastest race this year—the highest speed seen on the course since 2017. Steven took the Unlimited Gold this year for his performance in Bardahl Special through Saturday, making him the winningest Unlimited pilot of the Reno races with eight victories.
Darryl Greenamyer had seven victories (Bearcat Conquest I), Bill “Tiger” Destefani had seven (P-51 Strega), and Lyle Shelton had six (Bearcat Rare Bear). The Bardahl Special sounded magnificent hurtling around the eight-mile course. How fitting that the airplane that took first place in the Unlimited Gold race in the first event 59 years ago at Sky Ranch, piloted that year by Bob Love and achieving 366 mph, should win the final event in 2023 with 469 mph. Full circle. (The complexities of scoring high-speed air racing in 1964 were modeled on the system then in place for hydroplane racing, and although Bob Love was fastest in the Gold final, Mira Slovak in Bearcat Miss Smirnoff was crowned Unlimited champion that year because he had the most points.)
Regardless of if and where air racing might end up in the future, it’s hard to imagine a true, vibrant Unlimited class of racing returning without serious overhauls to the incentive structure. In something of a microcosm for difficulties facing aviation overall, spiraling costs and litigation are slowly choking passion for participating in the sport. The appetite just isn’t there for folks with the means to modify and field racing monsters. There’s enthusiasm for more affordable and available T-6 Texans, which suggests a morph into class racing of stock warbirds may be possible with less reform and fewer dependencies.
AIN asked RARA’s Logoteta for his thoughts on what can be done to boost the purse, which was a little over $800,000 this year, shared by all classes. The prize money for winning the Unlimited Gold final this year was $65,000. To put that in perspective, overhauling a Merlin these days costs $200,000.
“We definitely realize, and we’ve said it to the classes, that this is a passion sport,” said Logoteta. “We understand that the people who come here to race do it because they love it. And they don’t get more in prize money than they spend. On rare occasions, somebody might break even or, even rarer, get a little bit ahead. We appreciate everything that they do and their love of the sport. They’re just fully invested in coming here and having a blast and competing. Figuring out ways to increase the purse has been on our radar for a while. We would like to increase it a lot, and we’re researching ways we can do that at a future location. I don’t really have answers beyond that right now.” Biplanes were struck from competition after an impasse this year between RARA and the class, and Jets were down to two heats.
On the positive side, many spectators we observed were drawn towards Formula 1, Sport, and STOL Drag classes, where innovation and advancement are vastly more affordable. Speeds and times are still improving, and new ideas are still appearing on the scene. Whether public interest in any one class can support future venues remains to be seen, but it is certainly reasonable to try and harness their countervailing popularity to salvage racing across classes.
One theory circulating has it that air racing cannot attract a big enough audience, with Red Bull’s now-canceled traveling tour touted as conclusive proof. Defying convention, the National Championship Air Races and Air Show: Final Flag at Reno shattered attendance expectations in 2023. It appears evident if the powers that be can find a path to agreement on a new venue, championship air racing can survive to continue delivering $100-plus million in area GDP contribution annually.
With right-sized prizes to rouse the slumbering giants, perhaps Unlimited-class air racing can be revived to resurrect the glory days of competition. With practical technical advances like race tracking and POV, new viewers can be attracted both on- and off-site. If a new venue can increase accommodation capacity and provide cross-pollination with other events and industries, the sky is the limit. But it will be difficult indeed to duplicate Reno Stead’s mountainous desert scenery as a backdrop for magnifying noise and adding perspective to speed, and, as Steve Hinton emphasized in our conversation, its absence of powerlines.
We asked Hinton, who first attended Reno in 1970 and inherited from Bob Hoover the role of pace pilot in 1992, if he has one especially fond memory from his 53 years of involvement in the Reno races, and he repsonded: “Flying with some of the best pilots in the world.” Championship air racing has ended in Reno. Long live championship air racing.