Pylons Past: Offering Personal Retrospective on History and Future of Reno Air Races

After 59 years of tradition in Nevada, just how the move to Roswell will turn out is an open discussion.

Tom Wilson

Tuesday, July 15, 2025 at 08:00 AM ET

Verified

Edited By:

Travis Tingle

Scene from the Reno Air Races in Nevada [Reno Air Racing Association/Susan Koppel]

Key Takeaways:

The Reno Air Races, established in 1964, became a celebrated event for "Unlimited" class racing, showcasing highly modified World War II aircraft and driving significant innovation and competition.
Over time, the "Unlimited" class encountered numerous obstacles, including technical limits for aircraft modifications, increasing operational costs, the rising investment value of stock warbirds, and rules that prevented the introduction of new purebred race planes.
The introduction of the "Sport Class" offered a modern alternative, emphasizing contemporary aircraft and technology with more flexible rules, providing a future direction for pylon racing as the "Unlimited" class declined.
Ultimately, a combination of financial pressures, demographic shifts, safety concerns, and urban development around Stead Field led to the relocation of the National Championship Air Races from Reno, Nevada, to Roswell, New Mexico, starting in 2025.

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Unlimited. Now there’s a word for you. What unfettered freedom it connotes, such exuberance for the future, an almost naive sense of limitless possibilities.

When I first came across unlimited in an aviation context. The editors of FLYING had published an annual titled Air Racing Aerobatics, with “racing” and “aerobatics” differentiated by different colors. It cost $1.95, a sobering $16.04 today, and was a thick 132 pages of tightly written personality profiles and technical features. Not incidentally, longtime FLYING contributor Peter Garrison expertly wrote many of these, and he’s still here in this issue.