when the usaac announced a competition for a new single-seat fighter in 1935, seversky sent the sev-2xp, confident it would win despite being a two-seater. however, the aircraft was damaged on 18 june 1935 during its transit to the fly-offs at wright field. to compete with the curtiss model 75, a single-seat aircraft with retractable undercarriage, seversky rebuilt the aircraft into the single seat sev-1xp, replacing the sev-2xp's fixed landing gear with a retractable undercarriage where the mainwheels retracted backwards into the wing, and an 850 hp (634 kw) r-1820-g5 replacing the -f3 of the sev-2xp. the sev-1xp was delivered to wright field on 15 august for evaluation, which was generally successful, although the cyclone failed to deliver its rated power and the sev-1xp only reached 289 mph (465 km/h) rather than the 300 mph (483 km/h) predicted by seversky.