To give the uninitiated an idea of what happened, whenever a plane at the Reno races experiences a mechanical problem, the pilot points the aircraft vertical and bleeds off all their forward speed. Once they're high enough, they level off and glide to the runway for a landing.

For the 'Unlimited' class of race aircraft, this typically occurs once a day during the races. These aircraft are running 3000hp engines, and race at speeds around 500mph.

Link #3 has the best angle on this maneuver. It looks like the pilot lost control shortly after pulling the plane vertical, after which it rolled 180 degrees and pitched straight to the ground.