I watched the first Autonomous Racing League event and while it certainly wasn't exciting, it was unintentionally hilarious

Over the weekend, the very first event in the Abu Dhabi Autonomous Racing League (A2RL) took place, with 600,000 people watching it online. Two races took place (AI vs human, plus AI vs AI), along with a raft of entertainment for the visitors. While autonomously driven cars are certainly going to be prevalent on our roads in the future, the notion of it being a sport sounds as dull as the inaugural race turned out to be.

If you're wondering what it was all actually like, you can watch a repeat of the online stream on YouTube. I'm a huge fan of motorsports, especially of the two-wheel kind, and tried my hand at it in my early twenties (to precisely zero success, of course). I also really like my racing games, especially Codemaster's F1 series, although I'm frequently frustrated by the limitations of playing against the computer and the general awfulness of playing online against people.

But having watched the entire livestream of the first event in the A2RL (a series of 'races' between AI-driven open-wheel cars), I can't help but feel that playing F1 on my gaming PC is infinitely more exciting than looking at desperately slow AI muddle its way around a race track.

Don't get me wrong—the tech on display is cool and from an engineering perspective, it reminded me a lot of competitions where schools and colleges compete to build electric race cars and then duke it out on a track. That's great to get involved and watch as a spectator, but this was duller than watching paint dry.

Though there is definitely some entertainment to be gleaned from watching the ridiculous nature of the 'racing'. Most especially at the point where one car spins out, another gets confused by all the smoke, a further AI loses signal and stops in the middle of the road, and then they all just line up behind the stalled vehicle with the super earnest commentators pointing out that's exactly how they're coded to respond.

«It's impressive technology,» says one of them. «Not ideal for a race, but