The Wittman designs were excellent in their day for examples of light racing aircraft. Both were only about 10 lbs. over the 500 lb minimum weight, while many other examples were much heavier. Wittman had a lot of experience with small engined light weight racing planes from the 30's, and provided much input on the overall spec's used in the Goodyear event. The early races showed them to their best advantage, being held at low altitude airports.

However with races held at Reno, it has been shown that the higher aspect ratio wings work better due to the lower induced drag. Where the Bonzo's aspect was around 3.5, along with the early Cassutts, later designs (including Cassutts with the Wilson wing) have far greater span. One of the safety factors of full size racing is the g loading in the turns is not very high. Earlier races with tighter turns took the lives of several fliers, and more pylons were added to the course to loosen the turns.

When we to turn to RC pylon racers, wing span has been determined to the one of the most important design changes ever made to designs. This is because the g loading in the turns is an order of magnitude higher than the manned aircraft. While all the AMA events have been span limited by the rules, the FAI events have been free to evolve. If you compare the typical FAI design from before 1990 to todays design, you will see that the wingspans have increased by around 30%. This allows the aircraft to maintain a higher exit speed out of the turn, thus increasing the overall average speed. This change decreases the induced drag to about 60% of the shorter spaned model, and in the turns induced drag is the dominate drag.