The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League, A2RL, is entering its third year. Two seasons of testing and racing in both virtual and real worlds have seen huge leaps in autonomous race tech, and it’s time to see how circuits outside of the Middle East will adapt to autonomous racing. Now familiar with Yas Marina, the five A2RL Pro Teams, the best of the autonomous best, will face a new challenge at Imola. But with years of experience behind them, facing the historic circuit is, perhaps, not the head scratcher it might have been a few years ago.
The first two seasons saw teams from all over the world get to grips with driverless race tech in its infancy. Year one at Yas Marina was very much the series’ infancy. The teams knew what they needed to do, but the understanding of the task at hand was still very much in development - something that ASPIRE and A2RL itself was keen to point out at the time. It was a public test of new technology. Its second public event, held 18 months later, again at Yas Marina, showed how quickly the teams developed. Race speeds were higher, overtakes were no longer tentative but confident, racecraft greatly improved, and there was even a ‘racing incident’ that added some excitement to proceedings. People change a lot in a year and a half, and autonomous race tech did the same. The Bambi legs were truly gone in season two.
