Will you watch racing without drivers?

I don't want to derail the other thread about Newman, but it has gotten me thinking again.

Now first and foremost, aside from stage rally and euro rally cross, I don't really watch racing. I'll check a highlight reel out every now and then, but is just not fun or exciting to me.

That said, I don't even think 10 years ago this weekends crash would have been survivable, and while there's lots of argument and debate about different safety aspects, I haven't seen anyone mention getting rid of the least controllable part of racing, the drivers. 

With tracks already having been scanned to be millimeter accurate for racing simulators and the growth of autonomous vehicles on the civilian side of things, I personally think the next logical step is to eliminate the drivers.

The cars and their tech already seem to be limited by what the person behind the wheel can safely handle, as well as the crowds in case something goes wrong. (I'll come back to the crowds later).

So what would happen if we dropped the drivers from the cars? They immediately drop 200+ pounds not having the person and required safety gear in the vehicle. Not needing a place for a halo, or even really a windshield, the silhouettes could take massive changes, affecting aero, setup, handling, etc. 

I'm sure, eventually, we would be back in the same boat of all the vehicles being packed up, but without the risk to drivers lives.

Obviously there would need to be better spectator safety, because when a wreck happens if they are not constrained to "human safe" speeds, it could be very bad, but building better fences seems cheaper and easier than arguing the minutiae of cage design or chassis structure. 

But would you watch it?

Personally, I'd be more interested in F1 without drivers than NASCAR, but to make driverless F1 a real thing, I imagine we would need to build extremely expensive custom tracks to take advantage of the track. Given the chance, F1 cars generate enough downforce to be able to drive upside down. I wanna see that happen. 

Would this turn into another gigantic money sink for the uberrich? Most certainly. Would it affect the barrier to entry? Maybe, but I don't see anyone that's not already a millionaire involved in NASCAR, F1, or Indy these days. The days of building a car in the garage and taking it to Talladega to race have been over for decades. 

I also see it as a great opportunity to teach AI driving and handling, which could trickle its way down to the consumer level, without putting the public roads at as much risk as they are now (looking at the vajajays sleeping in the driver's seat of their tesla here). Admit it, even the hardcorest "I'll give up my carbs and stick shift when I'm dead" people would rather see the majority of people on the roads who already don't pay any attention to what they're doing just get shoved into automated pods and sent to work. 

So I know this was kinda scattered, but I think I got my question, and it's point, articulated well enough for a debate. 

I'm intrigued by the idea of a robo-race series, but I don't think I'd want it to replace every existing series. It should be its own thing. As much as we hate to see drivers get hurt, we also wouldn't care about F1 or NASCAR as much without the driver personalities.

Caveat: if they give the robo-drivers "personalities" and like, avatars that portray them as individual and unique entities, I would be more receptive to it. I mean, I develop emotional attachments to fictional characters all the time in TV and video games, this would be just like that.

"Will you watch racing without drivers?"

No.

All I needed was the headline for your answer, didn't read anything else.

Absolutely not.  Racing needs to be about the driver.  I'd much rather they did "retro racing" and slow the cars by introducing some arbitrary rule like the only drivetrain tech they can use is flathead engines or some such.  

Since NASCAR has abandoned using engines or chassis from the cars they a supposed to be, but use old tech motors and 4 speed transmissions already.  Just go even older, column shifted three speeds and flathead motors only, but then go nuts with all the aero and safety stuff.

I'd watch something like that at least once, but I'm not sure how long it would take for the novelty to wear off.  How would that business model work, though?  Even in Formula One, my understanding is that pay drivers make up a not-insignficant part of the grid of every race.  If you can't find someone who will pay you big bucks - or who has a sponsor that will pay you - to be able to drive the car that you built, where does the money come from?  I can see some automation and tech companies leveraging that as an R&D lab and to promote their vehicles' own autonomic feature sets, but that seems like it would get saturated pretty fast.  On top of that, spectators aren't going to show up to watch Splunk's new AI go up against last year's champion AI from Oracle because the interest is all based around the personalities and man's struggle against adversity.  I mean, the olympics coverage is barely about sports - most of it revolves around how Joe Bob is the youngest shotputter ever to cross over and also throw the high jump pole as a javelin or whatever.  It would be technically very interesting to read about, but I think just terribly boring to follow.

Technically, it's already a thing...

No

I might watch it, but probably only for a season... and only if there's contact allowed.  I mean, it's only money if they contact... so why wouldn't you allow that?

But, I doubt I'll find it compelling to watch it for longer than that.  Maybe I'll be proven wrong, who knows.

No, but I also don't really watch racing WITH drivers either. I don't have the attention span nor the television service necessary to do so. 

Nope, might as well watch sim racing AI bots go at it on a PC.

Okay seriously though, what if it was cartoon characters portrayed as the bots? Homer Simpson could drive like the dope that he is in the show, and Speed Racer would drive much better but always have sabotage from enemies setting him back, and Hatsune Miku could sing while she drives...

I don't know why but this is starting to sound hilarious.

Nope. But then again, I don't watch it WITH drivers so my vote doesnt really matter

Here's the thing, I watched the Diecast Rally racing YouTube stuff last night. Those aren't piloted. We watched about three minutes and were bored out of our mind. We then watched the downhill marble racing. Also not piloted. Bored AF within one minute. 
 

NO. I will not watch auto pilot "racing". Without the human element, is it really a sport? The best part about being a human is our imperfections that make us enigmatic. 
 

you really want to see car people get ticked? How about an auto pilot police vehicle? Imagine a vehicle that hands out tickets without mercy, and even the slightest slip up, and you've now gotten an infraction. Oh, and what about the times the system glitches and thinks you did a burnout at that stop light, but you weren't even moving? Good luck fighting THAT in court.  

I watch that 3dbotmaker guy race hot wheels on YouTube. So ... Yes. Yes I would. 

Dunno, I'd try it. Any kind of unlimited-F1 series would be interesting, but after you take care of driver safety the next problem is spectator safety, and it would be hard for a series to sustain itself with the complete loss or large reduction of spectators that would be necessary to allow for cars with greater cornering speeds.

Just big slot car racing.  Boring.  

My take is if you're going to eliminate the driver then there doesn't need to be a car and you can just resort to e-sports and eliminate the carbon footprint of racing as well as the safety hazards to the humans participating and spectating an event. 

The argument of a driver controlling a vehicle from afar similar to an MQ-9 airframe isn't much more of an argument either IMO. It's still disconnected and numb. 

I can tell you that I don't actively sit down to watch an iRacing stream so chances are I wouldn't do the same for an in person race. 

GameboyRMH said:

Dunno, I'd try it. Any kind of unlimited-F1 series would be interesting, but after you take care of driver safety the next problem is spectator safety, and it would be hard for a series to sustain itself with the complete loss or large reduction of spectators that would be necessary to allow for cars with greater cornering speeds.

"But no one has to be present! Phone it in with the new VR goggles for f1!"  The amount of fake in our world is creeping in. Keep it real, fellas. 

DirtyBird222 said:

I can tell you that I don't actively sit down to watch an iRacing stream so chances are I wouldn't do the same for an in person race. 

The interesting thing for me here, is I've been watching some World of Tanks/Warships replays of late.  It took me a little while to figure it out, but I realized it was mostly because of the commentator, and because they helped show the stakes, the mistakes, and provided some levity to the whole endeavor.  I tried doing a search for similar... but I have a feeling that most of the people doing that for eRacing/iRacing/sim coverage are trying to make it professional... and are missing an audience by doing so.

sleepyhead the buffalo said:

I might watch it, but probably only for a season... and only if there's contact allowed.  I mean, it's only money if they contact... so why wouldn't you allow that?

It's only money if they contact. Hmm. Some sort of skateboard chassis with different body options. Roval course this week? Nascar style. Street course? F1 body, Road course? Truck body. 

I will concede an issue that I haven't seen mentioned yet, but have in other threads. A lot of the current race tracks and courses are pretty old and not even really able to contain the current crop of racers. That would be an expesnive problem for something considerably faster or grippier. 

No, don't see the point. I do like to watch Battle Bots 

Slot car racing was a thing.   Cars remote controlled by a driver on a slotted track.

Now people with remote controls race drones, model cars, model airplanes. 

Not to mention gamers that win racing simulation games are put into real cars.  

People are doing it already.   

  I bet if humans are not in the race cars, but controlling them by remote control, the speeds will be much higher, crashes will be more spectacular, and the spectators will have to be further away in order to be out of ballistic range of the flying crash debris.

Why even have cars? Just go for ultimate driver and crowd safety and just stream the Daytona 500 from Forza. The tracks are already scanned, the specs are known, just hire a Dev team and go "racing". 

AI racing doesn't sound too interesting. Wirelessly controlled cars on the other hand, does. Proven by the fact that scale RC racing is fun to watch. Drivers are way more reckless when they aren't in the car.

People can and do watch simulated racing online. Not a huge number, but it's a niche community that's not going away anytime soon.

There have been competitions for Rocket League where people program their own AI cars and pit them against each other. They don't draw nearly as many viewers as standard Rocket League matches.

Yes.

When they start bolting .50 cals and flamethrowers and saws and E36 M3 on the cars.  Until then, no.