Roswell Celebrates Hosting Its First National Championship Air Races
The National Championship Air Races have found a new home hangar in Roswell, New Mexico, bringing to the city a thrilling sport that provides an additional meaning to the “high” in high-speed competition.
“It’s basically like having NASCAR racing 50 feet in the air at 500 miles per hour,” says Air Races participant Jerry Kerby. “I don’t know how you can get much more exciting than that.”
Roswell residents were able to enjoy this exhilarating experience in September 2025 without leaving town when the annual National Championship Air Races event was held at the Roswell Air Center for the first time. The event had taken place in Reno, Nevada, for nearly six decades.
Fred Telling, chairman and CEO for the National Championship Air Races, says that steadily encroaching development near the former event site led race officials to seek a new location that would provide more space. Telling says nearly 40 cities nationwide expressed interest in hosting the races, but Roswell was chosen because of “several important features,” including multiple in-town medical facilities, proximity to three Air Force bases and ample opportunity for growth.
“We converted 80 acres of dirt into an event space, which is about 35% larger than what we had, with room to grow in the future,” Telling says. “It’s a great environment for racing.”
Kerby, a 23-year Air Force veteran and former commercial pilot who has been air racing since 2019, says the city and people of Roswell have welcomed the annual event “with open arms.”
“From the first time we showed up here, the support has been overwhelming,” Kerby says. “You couldn’t ask for a better venue. Everything has been 100% positive – the Air Center, the race course, the people in the town. We’ve hit a home run by having it held here.”
A Long History
It has been joked that the first automobile race was held shortly after the second car was built. Telling says it is similar for air racing, which officially began in France in 1909, barely five years after the Wright Brothers’ historic inaugural flight. As the competitions increased in frequency, Telling says air racing had a profound effect on innovation and speed in those early years of aviation.
The current National Championship Air Races event dates to 1964, when Nevada pilot and rancher Bill Stead organized an event on a small dirt strip just outside Reno. That modest gathering evolved over the ensuing decades and now includes a wide variety of types and classes of races.
Like Kerby, many of today’s air racers are former military members. But there are also numerous participants with other aviation backgrounds, from airline pilots to crop dusters. Telling says he was a corporate executive who simply liked to fly before spending a decade racing in the early 2000s.
The Roswell event featured courses of five varying lengths for seven different classes of competition. They ranged from a 3,250-foot straight-line route (basically a drag race) to an expansive 10.3-mile trioval course for jet aircraft traveling in excess of 500 mph.
“It is an excellent race course as far as safety and ease of flying. There’s plenty of room,” Kerby says. “And it’s a great place for fans to watch the races, because all the start-finish lines are in front of the grandstands, and most of the passing happens right in front of the crowd.”
Flyer Education
While the National Championship Air Races event offers thrills in the sky, organizers also want to help lift up students when it comes to exploring potential careers in aviation and STEM-related professions.
So in addition to providing more than $200,000 in scholarships, the Air Races maintained a STEM Discovery Zone at the event. This area was filled with interactive learning opportunities, including flight simulators, robotics demonstrations and exhibits showcasing the latest in artificial intelligence.
“We historically have had about 8,500 students in our STEM programs,” Telling says. “Flying teaches a lot of skills, and we want to get people interested in aviation and the types of careers that can come with it. We’re really excited about the path these students can take through aviation.”
Telling is also excited about the future of holding the annual National Championship Air Races in Roswell. “We’re here to stay, and we look forward to making this our new home,” he says. “New Mexico already had the slowest form of air racing with the Balloon Festival, and now it has the fastest. We’re going to bracket it at both ends.”
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