Aircraft
Checkered Final Flag at Reno
The 2023, and final, Reno Air Races drew an estimated 140,000 specators
P-51 Mustang Bardahl Special
Fifty-nine years of separation: the Unlimited winner this year was P-51 Mustang Bardahl Special, flown by Steven Hinton. Monochrome inset shows the same airplane taking first place at the 1964 Gold final race, flown by Bob Love. (Photos: Dan Whitney)

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.

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