Airspeeder pilot Zephatiali Walsh beats Fabio Tishcler in inaugural EXA remotely piloted race

Air­speed­er pilot Zepha­tiali Walsh beat fel­low-com­peti­tor Fabio Tish­cler in a tense and close inau­gur­al EXA remote­ly pilot­ed race in the salt flats of South Aus­tralia, the first time the two pilots were giv­en full licence to race their 4.1m long eVTOL race-craft.

This skill and com­mit­ment was on show from the very begin­ning, with three over­takes in the first lap alone, the most dar­ing manoeu­vre of which was reward­ed when Zephatali over­took Tis­chler who had gone wide at Turn 1, just one metre below his fel­low com­peti­tor.

Walsh com­ment­ed: “As pilots, we have been devel­op­ing this sport behind the scenes over hun­dreds of hours of sim­u­la­tor, engi­neer­ing and test­ing work and as soon as the lights turned green, we became rac­ers com­pet­ing for a place in the his­to­ry of this sport.

The cir­cuit race took place over a 1km dig­i­tal sky-track, with the com­pe­ti­tion played out in two ses­sions, the first of a series of EXA remote­ly pilot­ed races that will serve as the devel­op­ment and feed­er series for the Air­speed­er ful­ly crewed Grand Prix start­ing in 2024.

EXA Remote­ly pilot­ed races will soon fea­ture a much wider grid of pilots includ­ing Bruno Sen­na, for­mer F1 and World Endurance Rac­ing star, where dig­i­tal sky-tracks and a light approach to infra­struc­ture means rac­ing can take place in a range of loca­tions from marine to for­est and desert set­tings.

Beyond mak­ing motor­sport his­to­ry, Alau­da Aero­nau­tics, the tech­ni­cal team and man­u­fac­tur­er of the pio­neer­ing Speed­ers that com­pete in EXA and Air­speed­er races has cre­at­ed an engi­neer­ing and dig­i­tal ecosys­tem for elec­tric fly­ing car (eVTOL) rac­ing.

This tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ment is deliv­ered by a team drawn from some of the most cel­e­brat­ed names in For­mu­la 1, motor­sport and advanced aero­space devel­op­ment, includ­ing mul­ti-World Cham­pi­onship win­ning engi­neers from Fer­rari and devel­op­ment tal­ent from Boe­ing, Air­bus, McLaren, Jaguar Land Rover and Rolls-Royce.

They had to build Race con­trol sta­tions, pilot con­trol sta­tions, cut­ting edge 5G net­works, Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty (AR) Sky Tracks, an engi­neer­ing and team con­trol sta­tion, akin to that seen in elite tra­di­tion­al motor rac­ing.

This starts with the 4.1 metre fly­ing rac­ing car (eVTOL), a car­bon fibre con­struc­tion full-scale rac­ing quad­copter deliv­er­ing 320kW, equalling an Audi SQ7 per­for­mance SUV, but the Audi weighs 2,500kg while an Air­speed­er rac­ing craft (with­out pilot) weighs just 130kg. It can lift more than 80kg, with accel­er­a­tion from 0–62mph tak­ing 2.8 sec­onds and can climb to 500 metres.

Alau­da has col­lab­o­rat­ed with Tel­stra Pur­ple, Acro­nis and Ama­zon Web Ser­vices to cre­ate the dig­i­tal archi­tec­ture that will dri­ve the 5G enabled infra­struc­ture need­ed to ensure the safe man­age­ment of autonomous and pilot­ed eVTOL vehi­cles in urban envi­ron­ments.

Alauda’s time­keep­ing part­ner, IWC Schaffhausen, and Air­speed­er teams were also able to draw upon exper­tise from Acro­nis and Teknov8 in secur­ing and man­ag­ing vital teleme­try and race data.

The stag­ing of the race was sup­port­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of South Aus­tralia, which extends to co-fund­ing Alau­da Aero­nau­tics hyper-fac­to­ry, a place where the world’s best per­for­mance fly­ing cars will be built along­side space-craft, satel­lites and air­craft.