First off, I want to say it's very fun to do this with Super Formula cars on the F1 Abu Dhabi track. Quite strange to see self-driven cars going around a track

First off, I want to say it's very fun to do this with Super Formula cars on the F1 Abu Dhabi track. Quite strange to see self-driven cars going around a track with no one in the stands. Seems like a future where we outsource everything to machines, including typical events of living. Of course I don't know the details of the rules and implementation, but this whole exercise seems to be misguided. Sounds like they have teams hand-coding their algorithms with specific inputs/outputs. That's taking us all the way back to the earliest chess playing programs. We have much better methods today. What's lacking is the ability to train via simulation in a rapid manner. We could even collect data from all the human driven cars that race on the Abu Dhabi track as example inputs and outputs, similar to a database of professional chess games played. Of course we'd also have to note the properties of each car and driving conditions associated with the data, but it's a start. I wonder who designed the format, it doesn't seem to be a researcher who really wants to use this to advance self driving on real roads.