A2RL celebrates Europes first autonomous multi-car race at Imola
Words: Andrew Sluys
The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) has run its maiden multi-car autonomous race on European soil at Italy’s Imola Circuit on 5 September 2026, as part of the ACI Racing Weekend.
UAE outfit Kinetiz took the chequered flag in the League’s first international outing, battling through 12 laps of one of the toughest tracks on the calendar.
Run by ASPIRE, the grand challenges division of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council, A2RL wants to become the world’s first fully autonomous racing championship.
Imola marked the series’ first step outside Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit, its home since 2024.
Five identically-specced EAV-25 racecars lined up, meaning the differences in the software instead of the hardare.
Kinetiz took the win ahead of Constructor Racing (Germany), PoliMOVE (Italy), Unimore (Italy) and reigning two-time champion TUM (Germany), who never got going after a formation-lap glitch sent the car back to the pits.
Drama struck when pole-sitter Unimore, having clocked the fastest lap at 1:40, suffered a technical failure and slowed dramatically mid-race.
PoliMOVE — who’d hit a top speed of 252.3 km/h while running within a second of the leader — couldn’t avoid a rear-end collision, ending both cars’ races and handing Kinetiz the lead for good.
Kinetiz Team Principal Omar Hanif Alqassim called it “a very proud moment for all of us at Kinetiz to win A2RL’s first international race and, most importantly, to represent the UAE on an international stage.”
Teams prepped with a tight nine-day physical test window covering rain and hail, backed by over 5,000 hours of simulation work in 2025. A2RL now heads back to Yas Marina for its next round.
