The Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) completed the first multi-car autonomous race in Europe at the Imola Circuit in Italy on September 5, 2026, as part of ACI Racing Weekend. Kinetiz (UAE) won the league’s inaugural international race, across 12 laps of one of the most technically demanding circuits.
Organized by ASPIRE, part of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), A2RL brings together key players across Abu Dhabi’s autonomous mobility ecosystem, with strategic oversight from the Smart and Autonomous Systems Council (SASC).
The race brought together five fully autonomous race cars: race winner Kinetiz (UAE); second placed Constructor Racing (Germany); PoliMOVE (Italy), which took third; Unimore (Italy), which finished fourth; and 2024 and 2025 champions TUM (Germany), which came fifth. Each team competed with identical EAV-25 hardware, placing the performance differential in software: perception, planning, control and real-time decision making.
Two-time consecutive A2RL champion TUM saw its winning streak end after encountering a technical issue on the formation lap resulting in the car returning to the pitlane before the rolling race start.
The fastest lap was set by pole-sitter and race leader Unimore at 1 minute 40 seconds, before a technical issue brought the car to a halt. PoliMOVE, which had reached the race’s top speed of 252.3km/h and was running within a second of Unimore, was unable to avoid the slowed car and collided with its rear, ending both teams’ races. The incident handed the lead to Kinetiz, which held the position to the chequered flag.
Faisal al Bannai, secretary general of the Advanced Technology Research Council, said, “A2RL reflects how Abu Dhabi approaches advanced technology: setting an ambitious challenge, bringing the best minds together and creating the conditions for accelerated progress. Imola put that approach to the test, with five autonomous cars navigating the uncertainty and pressure of a live race. Seeing Kinetiz take the win marks an important moment for the UAE, while the wider value lies in what the race revealed about reliability, resilience and real-time decision making. These insights will help advance autonomous systems far beyond racing.”
ASPIRE CEO Stephane Timpano added, “What we saw here gives us a new measure of how these systems perform and adapt under pressure.”
A true test
Defined by elevation changes, narrow racing lines, limited run-off and difficult overtaking zones, Imola tested how autonomous systems manage grip, traffic, positioning and overtaking under sustained pressure. The race required the AI to continuously respond to other competitors, deciding when to attack, defend and adapt its planned trajectory as the race developed.
The road to Imola
In advance of the race, teams prepared through a condensed physical testing period of just nine days across varying conditions including rain and, at one point, hail. The newly fitted wet-weather kit enabled all five teams to run, collectively completing 38 laps.
To supplement physical testing and give teams the opportunity to enhance their code, A2RL’s Sim Sprint returned this season, featuring high-fidelity digital twins including Yas Marina, the A2RL Autodrome, Suzuka and Imola to help teams develop and validate their algorithms.
Alessandro Tucci, executive director, House of Grand Challenges at ASPIRE, said, “The performance teams demonstrated during the race is the result of defined development strategy built on more than 5,000 hours of simulation testing and racing in 2025. Racing in Imola was a fundamental step for A2RL evolution and we are proud of the results achieved by the teams and A2RL organization. Bringing that preparation to a circuit like Imola is how we keep raising the competitive standard of A2RL.”
What’s next
A2RL will return to Yas Marina Circuit for its next race.
Lessons from Imola will now feed back into the R&D program in Abu Dhabi. A2RL said that testing autonomous systems across circuits with materially different layouts and racing characteristics provides a stronger measure of their ability to adapt, and continues A2RL’s role as a public testbed for autonomous technology and reinforces Abu Dhabi’s position as a hub for applied AI and autonomous systems innovation.
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