Three years ago, at Road & Track's 70th anniversary celebration in New York City, I made a bold—perhaps reckless—prediction. In the future, I asserted, automobile racing would be autonomous, or remotely-guided, or even virtual. My fellow panelist, none other than Mario Andretti, was taken aback, as were many in the audience.

Now, the COVID-19 epidemic has caused the cancellation of all racing events for the foreseeable future. It's no longer prudent to have large bodies of enthusiastic spectators shouting, high-fiving, hugging and engaging in the kind of activities the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention deem propitious for viral diaspora.

Shown above: The eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series Race - O'Reilly Auto Parts 125, a simulated race held at the Texas Motor Speedway on March 29, 2020.

Unlike the far-seeing Bill Gates, I did not view virtual racing as a side-effect of the pandemic. Rather, I imagined it as another CO2-blocking move, an effort to be viewed as "green." But whatever the trigger, we have now witnessed the first major racing events where the cars, the track, and the actual competition were not "real" in the physical sense. The drivers, though, were flesh and blood, steering their mounts through the usual melee remotely, using simulators of varying degrees of sophistication. For all intents, it was real racing, with tension, passing, accidents and podium finishers. To everyone's surprise, the audience loved it, which shouldn't have surprised us: most spectators usually aren't physically at the venue anyway, watching on TV or via the internet.

Today's better video games are startlingly realistic. I am routinely the recipient of "combat scenes" taken from Call of Duty, which acquaintances have mistaken for real footage. So it's easy to imagine that an interactive racing game, complete with "through-the-windshield" views, sheetmetal contact, and spectacular accidents, can be near-indistinguishable from reality. And the motorsport world's recent COVID-inspired forays into digital racing show us what the future of automotive competition might look like.

How could we further refine today's simulated racing? A sophisticated computer program could, on a random basis, sprinkle in some unforeseeable events, like sudden rain (who picked the right tires?), oil or debris on track, yellow-flag periods, or the odd mechanical failure like a broken suspension arm. Anyone who has seen a recent action or sci-fi movie knows that today's computer generated effects specialists can create crashes with all the sound, fury and horrific detail of the real thing... minus injury or death.

There are, of course, disadvantages. There's no such thing as a "trackside spectator" in sim racing, and a complete absence of the smells of hot oil, vaporized rubber and exhaust fumes—intangibles that add to the excitement of race day. For the drivers, there is a disconcerting lack of physical forces on the body—a drawback that applies to air combat simulators as well. G-forces, whether lateral or fore-aft, are a critical source of input for the skilled racing driver, signaling exactly what's going on at the four contact patches that determine the vehicle's well-being. Complex simulators exist that can mimic these forces through tilting and rocking motion, but right now they're so prohibitively expensive that only the top racing teams and the most well-heeled hobbyists have access to them.

But there are many other advantages: Drivers can compete outside their contractual series without legal consequences, at least until the lawyers add some paragraphs precluding it. And relative newcomers can participate in a sort of "pro-am" golf manner, without endangering others. We can expect the technology to evolve quickly too. Todays' mixed-bag of simulators can and will be replaced, perhaps by standardized setups of very high sophistication, including 360-degree projection, thus giving the driver much the same visual inputs as on a real track.

The big question is whether the virtual racing experience will survive the inevitable demise of COVID-19. My gut tells me it will, but the real, physical experience will still make a comeback. The two can coexist nicely, just as computer simulations have not totally eliminated real Hollywood car chases and human stunt performers.

But virtual racing is just one of the future forms of racing on the more-or-less distant horizon. There is no reason we can't easily imagine a hybrid: real cars, placed on a real track, but like the military's weaponized drones, piloted by drivers in remote locations. In this scenario, the sights and sounds are all there. Helmeted dummies, their empty Nomex gloves loosely tacked to the steering wheel, would represent the drivers. Severe crashes could result in the hapless dummies being torn asunder or consumed by flames. (The real driver might have to sit out the next few events.)

Looking even deeper into the cloudy crystal ball, I see fully autonomous race cars, in which would be embedded a highly-detailed electronic map of the track. Thus, a host of video cameras, radars and sensors would merely be tasked with keeping accurate track of the other vehicles, much as in Cadillac's Super Cruise, a semi-autonomous hands-free system that approaches Stage 3 capability. "Drivers" would still be involved in the ever-more-sophisticated racing knowledge of the cars: judging distances, eyeballing gaps for passing, out-braking the competitor. During the learning curve, there would, of course, be spectacular crashes. The relationship between experienced drivers and highly-skilled software engineers would be the key to success or failure, with both sharing the podium.

But at this point, let's inject a note of caution. The ultimate demise of the fighter pilot has been prophesied for decades, ever since my active-duty days in Marine aviation. We fighter pilots always consoled ourselves with a notion that's still true today: the human being is the most efficient and easily-programmable non-linear psychomotor machine ever devised, and it is cheaply and easily reproduced by unskilled labor.



Bob Lutz has been The Man at several car companies.

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