A2RL’s second season reached an exciting conclusion at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit, with reigning champions TUM crossing the finish line in a world first six autonomous car final.
18 months after the series’ first event, the second Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League season has shown how far the teams and their tech has come. While 2024’s event showed proof of concept, 2025’s final proved how fast, and how successfully technology can evolve.
A2RL event in Abu Dhabi
Photo by: Spacesuit Media / A2RL
The A2RL season finale featured three events. A Silver race made up of time trials that saw Code-19, FRVIAV, TGM, Fly Eagle, and Rapson take the Yas Marina Circuit’s North layout as quickly as possible. In the end, TGM secured a convincing victory.
This year sees the return of a 2024 feature event: Human Vs AI. F1 ace Daniil Kvyat, once again, took on an A2RL racer – this year from reigning champions TUM – around Yas Marina Circuit. In the first year Kvyat bested the unmanned machine by a convincing margin, but this year promised a much closer gap.
In testing, the TUM car posted competitive times, meaning there was more of a challenge for the top flight driver. The two battled it out in a thrilling chase. Kvyat gave the machine-driven racer a ten second head start, and after two warm up laps with the F1 star keeping his distance, the chase was on.
With just 10 laps of Yas Marina Circuit’s North layout to catch his competitor, Kvyat’s car closed the gap convincingly in the opening laps, settling a scant distance behind until the last lap was done. The showcase ended with the AI crossing the line less than a second ahead of the human – a huge leap from the series’ inaugural meeting that shows just how far AI drivers have come.
The difference from one year to the next shows that in this extreme, real world environment progress can be made. The technology gap is closing in front of a live audience, and A2RL isn’t afraid to show its workings.
The progression year on year is clear from the result, again showing brisk progression. Kvyat added: “Looking back to when A2RL development first began a couple of years ago, with perhaps minutes between a human driver and the AI car, down to 10 seconds in our first showcase last year, and now the gap is dramatically reduced again to fractions of a second – the progress is staggering. As a technology enthusiast and a racer, it’s fantastic to be a part of this development since the beginning. Being on track with an AI driver is unlike anything else and it was fun to bring an exciting battle to the fans this evening.”
Daniil Kvyat at the A2RL event in Abu Dhabi
Photo by: Spacesuit Media / A2RL
With the capacity crowd suitably warmed up it was time for the final. It’s fair to say that 2024’s grand final was a little… stunted. Being the first event of its kind, and with technology that was very much in its infancy the fact it happened at all was incredible, but with just one car crossing the line first time out, the pressure was on for the 2025 event to deliver, and boy did it.
Unimore, Kinetiz, TII Racing, PoliMOVE, Constructor, and reigning champions TUM set off in a cacophony of wonderful Honda-powered noise. The Super Formula SF23-derived racers put on a spectacular show. The lack of human drivers adds an extra air of mystery to proceedings – each AI is programmed differently, hoping to be the quickest, and to not embed themselves in another car (or a wall). As spectators, we had no idea what to expect – how would they react to each challenge? Much like soft squishy humans they have their own styles and (sort of) personalities, but as they’re comparatively new we didn’t know what they’re like. And, of course, the AI drivers we got to know last year have evolved a fair bit.
In the 20 lap finale, TUM led the way until a daring overtake from Unimore put the champs into second place. The two tussled at 200kph+ speeds, delighting the fans in the stands. The gap between the leaders and the rest of the pack was more than respectable, a victory for Unimore seemed assured. Until… back marker Constructor faltered mid corner, coming to a halt. The Unimore car did its best to avoid the obstacle but clipped it, sliding off track with front end damage, and out of the race. After a full course yellow flag, the race got underway again. TUM’s lead was imperious, and, bar an unfortunate spin from Kinetiz, the race finished with four cars confidently crossing the line.
A2RL event in Abu Dhabi
Photo by: Spacesuit Media / A2RL
After a tense race with thrills, spills, TUM comfortably crossed the line first to become the 2025 A2RL champions, taking home glory, and a good chunk of the $2.25million prize pot.
Prof. Dr.- Ing. Markus Lienkamp, TUM Team Principal was frank about what happened: [1] [2] “In the final race we started on pole, but we knew Unimore was behind us. In the last training session Unimore was getting faster and faster, especially on cold tyres, and we couldn’t improve much more on cold tyres because our algorithms don’t allow for that – we wanted to be a bit safe… I expected they’d overtake us on lap 2. Which they did.”
A2RL event in Abu Dhabi
Photo by: Spacesuit Media / A2RL
Prof. Dr.- Ing. Lienkamp added that they’d expected to get closer as their rubber warmed up, eventually hoping to take first position back. Until, that is, the accident happened. “It was a pity for us because we wanted to see the action with Unimore until the end,” Prof. Dr.- Ing. Lienkamp lamented.
Unimore had victory snatched from it, Marko Bertogna, Head of Unimore Racing, added: “I was very, very happy with the performance that we showed, we were very stable reaching the professional level that we did… The overtake we showed was at a professional level. I’m incredibly happy about the technological result, less happy about the final result.”
A2RL event in Abu Dhabi
Photo by: Spacesuit Media / A2RL
18 months is a long time in tech land, and the difference between this season and the last is clear to see. No one is more pleased with its progress than Stephane Timpano, CEO of ASPIRE (A2RL organiser and part of the UAE government’s Advanced Technology Research Council): What happened tonight is not only amazing – it’s the result of very hard work that has been done by all the teams, and by the technical team of A2RL who’ve pushed the technology so hard over the last 18 months. It was great to see Abu Dhabi being so engaged, and the public feeling the emotion that you see in professional racing.”
With this year’s event coming to a close, the teams will be heading home with more data, more ideas, and more drive than ever to make the 2026 season even wilder, and more successful than before. We’ll see how their work pays off next year.
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