There are a few destinations that pilots and aviation enthusiasts view as a required pilgrimage. One of those is the National Championship Air Races in Reno, Nevada. The races have been held there at Stead airport since 1964. In 2023, it was announced that it would be the last year for racing in Reno. Now, the Reno Air Racing Association has announced the yearly event is being moved to Roswell, New Mexico, beginning in 2025.
On this week’s edition of Weekend Insight, TPR’s Jerry Clayton speaks with Reno Air Racing Association COO Tony Logeteta about the move.
This conversation has edited for length and clarity
Clayton: For those who may not be familiar with this sport, how would you describe the air races?
Logoteta: Oh, it's awesome. It's the world's fastest motorsport. So it's essentially wingtip-to- wingtip air racing with up to eight airplanes in the sky at the same time, at speeds up to and beyond 500 miles an hour in some classes, racing around a roughly oval closed pylon course. To put it a different way, I'd say it's NASCAR in the sky, but a lot faster.
Clayton: What was the reason behind leaving Reno stead airport?
Logoteta: Well, the airport authority had some other ideas for the airport. And you know, they had a plan to do some other things. There's been some encroachment from development nearby. And on the airport, there's parts of the airport that they're developing. And we always knew that eventually, we were going to be probably forced out of Stead airport. But we didn't think it was gonna be this quick.
So, we did it. We had a phenomenal year. That was amazing. It ended on a very, very tragic and sad note, and that was disappointing. But other than that, the year went really well. And then we've got an air show this year. So we're planning that, and we just finished a year-long relocation process as we get ready to go to Roswell, New Mexico.
Clayton: How did you settle on Roswell?
Logoteta: When we announced in March of 2023, that the 2023 National Championship Air Races in Reno would be the last one in Reno, we also announced that we would be pursuing a new location. We all met as a board, and nobody was in favor of throwing in the towel. Everybody wanted to try to find a new home.
So, we announced it and before we even released the official RFP, we had 38 inquiries from different areas around the country wanting to be the next home. Then we put the RFP out that really laid a lot more of the detail out for them all, sent it to all of them and also released it to others. And that allowed them to look at it and it weeded a lot out that just went oh, my goodness, there's no way we could do this.
Clayton: Can you encapsulate what you think makes Roswell a great place to host the air races?
Logoteta: Roswell is a great, great place. It's a beautiful clean slate. There's a ton of land there. It gives us opportunities to do some things that we haven't done in the past. There's lots of space to build a racecourse with virtually no threat of infringement from development or anything like that out where the racecourse is, which is huge, because we don't want to do this again, this is a massive process. We're looking for the permanent home, right?
So that's a big advantage. Plus, there's so much space there. There're so many things that you can do. We have opportunity for fly in traffic where people can fly their own personal planes in park and right there. We can do a lot more RV parking, we have room for more displays, we have more ramp space than we had instead.
So, there's a lot of room out there to do a lot of cool things. There's a ton of support from the community. There's a lot of surrounding support from nearby communities and, and ultimately it just gives us a really good safe location to go and race.
