Air Race E announces new V Class for VTOL aircraft; first series to start next year

Fol­low­ing the suc­cess of its first race class, Air Race E is launch­ing two new race class­es which includes one for air­plane and the oth­er for VTOL air­craft.

The new air­plane for­mu­la will be named Per­for­mance Class and based on a stan­dard elec­tric pow­er­train. Air Race E is devel­op­ing this new race plane under its own roof, with the help of aero­space man­u­fac­tur­ers includ­ing Air­bus.

Air Race E has said the race for­mat and rules of the new ‘V Class’ for VTOL air­craft will be revealed soon, adding it will be some­what dif­fer­ent than its oth­er two race class­es.

Jeff Zalt­man, CEO of Air Race E, said: “The launch of the new Per­for­mance Class and V‑Class will allow us to include more stake­hold­ers in our project and great­ly increase our abil­i­ty to meet the needs of the indus­try while organ­is­ing a thrilling motor­sport.

“The Per­for­mance Class will pro­vide deep­er insights on pow­er man­age­ment and best prac­tices and will steer more ded­i­ca­tion to the sub-sys­tems such as cool­ing, bat­tery man­age­ment sys­tems, pow­er elec­tron­ics and aero­dy­nam­ics.

“The V‑Class demon­strates a major step-change in air rac­ing. Air Race E will be work­ing direct­ly with the top pio­neer­ing organ­i­sa­tions in the e‑VTOL world to shape the event to be at the van­guard of both tech­nol­o­gy and enter­tain­ment in this next gen­er­a­tion of motor­sport.”

Air Race E’s rac­ing cir­cuit will fea­ture eight air­planes rac­ing around an oval cir­cuit mea­sur­ing just 1.5km end-to-end and at speeds of up to 250mph. The first race series will go ahead in 2022.

Its remain­ing race air­plane for­mu­la will be re-named the Open Class, refer­ring to the fact all man­u­fac­tur­ers can pro­duce their own pow­er­train con­fig­u­ra­tions up to 150kW pow­er. Both air­plane class­es will be raced accord­ing to the same rules, but with dif­fer­ences gov­ern­ing the pow­er­trains.

Some mod­i­fi­ca­tions and enhance­ments will be allowed in the Per­for­mance Class, to con­tin­ue Air Race E’s mis­sion of accel­er­at­ing tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion and show­cas­ing new tech­nolo­gies in the aero­space elec­tri­fi­ca­tion indus­try.