Indy Autonomous Challenge: AI Race Cars Now Overtake on Road Courses

The winning move at Laguna Seca on September 3 was an overtake into the Corkscrew, the most famous corner in American road racing. No human made it. UNIMORE Racing’s software did, beating Purdue AI Racing in the final of the Indy Autonomous Challenge’s first-ever passing competition on a road course.

Until this year every IAC head-to-head had been on an oval. Moving to a tight, hilly circuit with blind crests is a much harder problem for a self-driving race car. The teams still managed five high-speed overtakes without a crash.

What the Indy Autonomous Challenge is

The IAC is an Indianapolis-based non-profit that runs races between university teams who program fully autonomous race cars. It began as a US$1 million prize competition that drew 31 university entries, and now has 10 teams from 15 universities in four countries.

Every team gets the same car. The only variable is code: how each team perceives the track, plans a line and controls a vehicle at the limit of grip. That makes the IAC closer to a robotics research program with a pit lane than to a conventional racing series.

The car: IAC AV-24

The AV-24, unveiled at CES 2024, replaced the AV-21 after teams hit the limits of the older platform. It sits on a spec Dallara chassis and is built to run safely above 190 mph.

• LiDAR: four Luminar Iris sensors for 360-degree long-range coverage.
• Radar: Continental ARS540 4D radar.
• Compute: a dSPACE AUTERA AutoBox, with SIMPHERA software for digital-twin training.
• Control: a custom drive-by-wire system with independent front and rear brake actuation.
• Race control: automated, with two-way wireless links to every car.

Laguna Seca 2026 results

The IAC opened the Grand Prix of Monterey weekend, which also hosted the NTT INDYCAR SERIES. According to the official IAC results:

Passing Competition

Teams alternate as attacker and defender over rounds of rising difficulty. Race control gives the attacking car roughly 50 to 70 extra horsepower through real-time engine map changes. That makes the pass possible, but the software still has to pick the moment. PoliMOVE-TEC took third with a pass into the Andretti Hairpin.

Time trial

Purdue’s lap beat the previous IAC benchmark at Laguna Seca of 1:29.792, set by PoliMOVE-MSU in 2025. AI Racing Tech, a UC Berkeley-led team, found nearly 40 seconds on its 2025 time. There were no hardware failures and no accidents.

The Laguna Seca field

Eight university teams were listed for Laguna Seca:

• AI Racing Tech (UC Berkeley, with the University of Hawai’i, UC San Diego and Carnegie Mellon)
• Autonomous Tiger Racing (Auburn University)
• Caltech Racer (California Institute of Technology)
• IU Luddy (Indiana University)
• KAIST (South Korea)
• PoliMOVE-TEC (Politecnico di Milano and Tecnológico de Monterrey, with Michigan State and Lawrence Technological University)
• Purdue AI Racing (Purdue University)
• UNIMORE Racing (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia)

Six ran the time trial and four qualified for the passing competition. In one semifinal, Purdue and KAIST tied and Purdue advanced on best lap time. In the other, UNIMORE completed a second overtake in Round 2 to knock out PoliMOVE-TEC.

How the IAC got here

The IAC’s early years were about proving the cars could run at all. It moved to head-to-head passing on ovals in 2022. In January 2025 it ran what it calls the world’s first multi-car autonomous race at CES, and it set records in Florida and Italy that year. Laguna Seca in 2026 is the logical next step. A road course with elevation changes, blind corners and almost no run-off is far closer to what a road car’s autonomy stack has to handle.

The records autonomous cars hold

• 197.7 mph (318 km/h): the autonomous land speed record, set at Kennedy Space Center by an IAC Maserati MC20 running PoliMOVE-MSU software. Announced in March 2025, it beat the 192.8 mph an AV-21 managed in April 2022.
• 58.3 seconds at Modena: in June 2025 Unimore’s software beat the human lap record on the short layout of the Autodromo di Modena. The previous record was 59.3 seconds, by a Lamborghini Huracán STO.

That Modena lap is the one that should interest racing fans. An AI beating a human at a track record is no longer theoretical.

IAC vs A2RL

The IAC’s main rival is Abu Dhabi’s A2RL, which runs multi-car races rather than structured passing contests. Several teams do both. Unimore won at Laguna Seca on September 3 and led A2RL’s race at Imola two days later until a technical fault stopped it. Read our A2RL Imola report for the full story.

Can you bet on AI car racing?

No. We know of no US state-regulated or UK-licensed sportsbook that has listed IAC markets. The calendar is short, formats change from event to event and the fields are small, which leaves a bookmaker little to price.

If you follow autonomous tech as an investor or forecaster, regulated prediction markets are the nearest thing. They list contracts on AI and tech questions, which we cover in our AI prediction markets guide. Check our legal states list first, as access depends on where you live. Trading event contracts involves risk of loss.