Welcome to the driverless future of motorsport
Roborace is the first attempt at a self-driving racing series, and the Robocar concept gives us an idea of what to expect once its season kicks off.
Pesky humans, always causing trouble. For years, we've been trying to design the sleekest racecars possible, but that big bag of meat in the middle always makes it difficult. Thankfully, there's a new racing series that says goodbye to homo sapiens, and its first concept racecar is one seriously strange sight.
The concept comes from the mind of Daniel Simon, the newly crowned chief design officer of Roborace, the first driverless racing series. Simon worked on the movie "Tron: Legacy," and he's also held the position of senior designer at Bugatti. The man clearly knows cars. But when tasked with drawing up a racecar that doesn't require a human being, all bets are off.
"Beauty was very high on our agenda and we work hard to merge the best performance with stunning styling," Simon said in a statement. "It was important to us that we generate substantial downforce without unnecessary parts cluttering the car to maintain a clean and iconic look. This is largely made possible by using the floor as the main aerodynamic device."
From the looks of it, the Robocar concept (which is a pretty crappy name, to be honest) really capitalized on the lack of human cargo. You'd have a hard time pointing to a part of the car that didn't look like it served some sort of aerodynamic benefit. Elements of the front end and the chassis are reminiscent of current Formula 1 racers.
We still haven't seen the actual racecar, as this is merely a concept, but that will likely happen in the near future. Roborace plans to kick off its season of "shows" (that's what Roborace is calling its events) during the 2016-2017 FIA Formula E electric racing series.
