Lined up on the field side by side at about 100-foot intervals, the planes took off 10 seconds apart. Each cleared a staging pylon, which equalized the interval. And once the planes passed onto the course, each competitor was in his relative position on the course. The arrangement, unlike timed events, made competition wing tip to wing tip and helped make the events more exciting by allowing competitors and spectators alike to see just how daring the competition really was.

Death was not an uncommon occurrence in any form of air racing in the 1930s. Close flying, low altitudes, and high speeds, however, made the Thompson Trophy races particularly dangerous events. Death was a constant companion for the competitors, and each year the death of another competitor seemed to mar the event.

During the first Thompson Trophy Race in Chicago in 1930, a young Marine pilot, Captain Arthur Page, was leading the race and seemed well on his way to winning in his XF6C-6, an extensively rebuilt Curtiss Hawk fighter to which, among other things, an 800-hp Curtiss Conqueror engine had been added. Then, on lap 17, as Page was rounding the home pylon in front of the grandstand, his plane shuddered, went into a slow roll, and crashed. No one ever knew what happened to his plane. Charles "Speed" Holman, in a Laird "Solution" that had been completed only hours before the start of the race, went on to win. Page survived the crash, only to die from head injuries a few days later.

1934 - Roscoe Turner is congratulated by Mary Pickford after his Thompson Trophy victory

The legacy of death that was begun in that first race was to follow the Thompson Trophy for many years. In fact, death seemed to stalk the victors of the Thompson Trophy. Both 1930 winner Speed Holman and 1931 winner Lowell Bayles were killed in competitive crashes within a few months of their Thompson Trophy victories, and in 1933 winner Jimmy Wedell was killed in a non-racing crash in June 1934. On the eve of the 1934 race, only one former winner, 1932 champion Jimmy Doolittle, who had retired shortly after his victory, remained alive.

The prestige of the Thompson Trophy was, in itself, sufficient to assure the status of the National Air Races as one of the world's premier aviation meets.