Driverless car racing

In my past I have been a big fan of all sorts of motor sport.

I used to love watching Formula 1 in the old days where you had Nikki Lauda/James Hunt/Damon Hill and Nigel Mansell each week doing battles with the excitement of great overtaking, frequent crashes and drivers arguing and fighting among each other.

I loved on a Saturday afternoon watching on World of Sport old style VW Beetles battling with old style mini’s and Ford Escorts in rain soaked Rallycross competitions with mud flying everywhere. Cars would be flying around , rolling over and drivers flaring up after crashes. Great viewing!!

I also used to love watching blue Subaru Impreza’s, white Lancia Integrale’s and other modified rally cars zooming round lots of beautiful countryside’s and then spectacularly crashing into them. I still remember one rally car landing in a tree.

I have recently though read an article  about the emergence of the Roborace motor sport competition with  the article mentioning a racing car called a DeBot 2.0 which is an electric/driverless racing car that can do speeds of more than 200 mph.

I must admit when I first saw the article I was expecting some Heath Robinson contraption that some students were sending around  a race track.

On further investigation  I came across the above wild looking race cars that will be having a season shortly where drivers will be racing driverless versions of the same car.     

This article piqued my curiosity and after  a quick google of “robot car rallying” came across this article that showed that Audi has already developed a driverless rally car version of their new  Audi TTS.

One article does ask the question as to what is the point of racing driverless cars?.

I think this question may become less relevant as the popularity and availability of driverless cars finally takes off. It is not so long ago that a similar question could have been raised about racing diesel engine cars yet diesels growing popularity over petrol cars spurred on this change.

When driverless cars do finally take off I can still see manufacturers wanting to use motor sports to highlight their brands driverless cars. I believe driverless racing will be here to stay.

So what what might happen then for Formula 1. Well Lap times will get faster, cars will go even faster as no passengers to worry about, spectacular crashes could be become a thing of the past and viewable only as old YouTube clips. There will also no longer be the need for celebrity  racing drivers and the loss of any future Stig’s.

So will the next generation take to following driverless racing? will races always be the same? where will the excitement come from if there are no spectacular crashes or after race driver fights? will there still be a human factor involved in the races or will robots be used to change tyres and fix cars .

The weather conditions are likely to be the only non IT element that could still play a starring role in driverless races i.e rain soaked electrical problems or snow in rallying.

Therefore enjoy the below as these halcyon days may be disappearing in the future!!