Promoted

A2RL's European racing debut: What you need to know

The Race Team

03 Sep 2026 — 3 min read

The most advanced autonomous racing series in the world has headed to Europe for the first time, with Imola hosting a race between five autonomous single-seaters this Saturday.

The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) returns with its first major on-track event since staging its 2025 finale in Abu Dhabi last November, where teams competed for a $2.25million prize pool.

This time around, five teams have qualified for a race at Imola this Saturday, where they'll race Super Formula cars which have been heavily adapted to drive autonomously.

Here's everything you need to know about A2RL's international debut:

Nine days of testing

Teams are using the A2RL EAV-25 platform, which marks a huge step forward from the series' initial autonomous concept.

There's no better evidence for that than it lapping just 1.58 seconds off ex-F1 driver Daniil Kvyat at Abu Dhabi last November, having been 10 seconds adrift at Suzuka just 18 months prior to that.

"Still, today, after two and a half years here, I'm still amazed when I see this car running," A2RL technical director Nicola Palarchi told The Race at Imola.

"The level of performance when they approach, when they attack a corner is amazing.

"And thinking that there's no one there [in the cockpit], and it's not remote control...there's no predefined driving or strategies, the car is driving by itself and making its own decision, [is] mind-blowing."

Imola presents a huge, new challenge for the technology, with far more bumps and kerbs than Abu Dhabi, very little margin for error with gravel traps aplenty, and variable weather conditions.

So teams have been given nine days of testing at Imola prior to the Saturday finale. They all have identical EAV-25s and the autonomous stack that sits within the cockpit and has been developed by the series, but it's down to the teams to code their AI machines to be the fastest.

Teams qualified their cars at the end of those nine days of testing, with Italian outfit Unimore Racing coming out on top, ahead of fellow home team Polimove.

Imola qualifying result

Unimore Racing 1m37.314s
Polimove +1.084s
TUM +1.746s
Kinetiz +2.936s
Constructor +3.964s

Season one and two champion TUM was third, but it knows the result is far from settled.

That's because these autonomous cars really can race each other, with TUM passing Unimore for victory in the Abu Dhabi finale last year.

Just like in traditional motorsport, there are also trade-offs for the teams to make when programming the cars, in terms of one-lap speed and race pace, so there's every possibility that the order will change in Saturday's race.

The laptimes have been very competitive too. A2RL says the fastest time got to within eight and a half tenths of the benchmark human laptime, set by current Super Formula driver Juju Noda.

The cars have been weatherproofed

Presently, the weather forecast is for a scorchingly hot and dry Saturday at Imola. But should that change, A2RL is now ready for it.

A2RL's testing at Suzuka in 2024 exposed one vulnerability with the initial cars: in wet conditions, the sensors and autonomous stack were exposed to moisture, which caused some issues.

Therefore, a rainproofing kit can be fitted to the EAV-25, which means it can run in the wet - and has done successfully - at Imola. It even ran in hail conditions.

That kit includes sharkfin louvres on the cockpit to cover air exhaust vents, cockpit cover seals, and specifically designed and engineered rubber 3D-printed camera sleeves to seal the forward camera hatches.

"We are very happy; we have been working on a rain kit for some time," Palarchi told The Race.

"We had some rain already in 2024 when we were preparing for the exhibition in Suzuka at the time of the Super Formula event.

"We have been focusing on this in the last few months, as we knew we were coming to Imola and the weather is not as stable as in Abu Dhabi.

"So we managed to roll out the rain kit that was very successful, and the teams could enjoy wet track condition, which was a first also for all of them."