There was a lot of development between the World Wars that went into air racing. Read up on the Schneider Trophy races someday. There was a lot of national pride involved, and the planes that competed were the fastest machines of their era. It was won for the last time in 1931 by a Supermarine S.6B at a speed of 340 mph. The designer of that plane went on to create the Supermarine Spitfire that became famous during the Battle of Britain.
Be sure to watch The First Of The Few (US title: Spitfire). Good bit about the Schneider Trophy races there. Unfortunately, I have not found a copy with good audio. And the video is pretty poor to anyone who didn’t grow up with TVs that had rotary tuners. But it’s still a must-see.
For a slightly different take:
The R-1 won the 1932 Thompson Trophy race, piloted by Jimmy Doolittle. He also set a new world landplane speed record of 476 km/h (296 mph) in the Shell Speed Dash. The distinction of a landplane record was noteworthy because, at that time, specialized speed seaplanes outran landplanes, e.g. the Macchi M.C.72 with over 700 km/h. The Springfield Union of September 6, 1932 quoted Doolittle as saying, "She is the sweetest ship I’ve ever flown. She is perfect in every respect and the motor is just as good as it was a week ago. It never missed a beat and has lots of stuff in it yet. I think this proves that the Granville brothers up in Springfield build the very best speed ships in America today."
Bolding mine.
I always thought it was odd that the fastest planes back then were seaplanes. The floats and struts have a drag penalty compared to wheeled gear. Then I read the explanation somewhere. Those racing seaplanes had small wings, and high wing loading; low drag, but you have to be going very fast just to take off. Add a fixed-pitch propeller optimized for high speed and it took them miles to get up to takeoff speed. I guess there weren’t any runways long enough to build a comparable land plane, so the speed records belonged to seaplanes.