Buenos Aires, the city of passion, tango, football and now, Roborace.
With our show-stopping matt black garage glistening in sunny Buenos Aires, we attracted thousands of fans and Formula E teams eager to Instagram and Tweet photos of our Devbots and garage.
With all the lessons of Marrakech and Hong Kong fresh in the mind the team were confident that something important, nay historic could happen in Buenos Aires, a city steeped in racing history. What followed proved to be exactly that.
Everyone’s eyes were on the sky and the potential storms that were predicted to hit just as race time approached adding to the spectacle. Devbot 1 and Devbot 2, in iconic football team colours of River Plate and Boca Juniors were on track and ready.
And then we saw history play out in front of our eyes; two driverless cars racing and engaging with each other on a city track. A world first. Live in the balmy Buenos Aires afternoon.
Alex Tai, CEO Virgin Racing Engineering was at the Roborace garage as our Devbots raced and gave us some perspective: “It is amazing how far Roborace has come since first showing the Devbot less than six months ago and we can’t wait to see the Robocar in cities soon. Many people are working on autonomous vehicle technology, but none have achieved the milestone of putting two cars on a race track together.”
Devbot 1 clad in River Plate colours raced to a top speed of 186 kph and beat Devbot 2 after a racing incident on track which allowed Devbot 1 one to coast to victory a role reversal of the current Argentine Primera División where Boca reign supreme.
What a weekend. Expect many more historic moments like this in the future, starting this next week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.
We’ll be documenting each step of our journey with Roborace across Medium, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Don’t miss a moment.
