He helps Tony escape Germany, in the process putting himself in the Gestapo's crosshairs so he has to flee Germany too, thus becoming a refugee.

This book sounds like a lot of plot in perhaps too few pages.

Eric Ambler's Epitaph for a Spy (1938) does not have an air race, but it is a good thriller where statelessness is a key part of the tension. I wrote about it a little in 2021.