Andrew Wade

Drone racing lights up motorsport

In-Depth

If ever a technology has emerged ready-made for the world of sport, the drone is surely it. Remote-control quadcopters have, in recent years, been used for everything from industrial inspection to filming scenes in Hollywood blockbusters. It was only ever going to be a matter of time before we started racing them.

At the vanguard of the fast-growing sport is the Drone Racing League (DRL), the second season of which is set to air soon on Sky Sports and ESPN. Pilots wearing first-person-view (FPV) goggles use radio controllers to fly small drones around themed 3D courses, reaching speeds approaching 100mph. Made from carbon fibre, the drones use high-performance electronic speed controllers that modulate the amount of power that goes to each of the four motors. This allows them to speed up or slow down extremely quickly, enabling jaw-dropping manoeuvres that resemble a live-action video game.

“We develop all of our drones in-house,” Nicholas Horbaczewski, DRL founder and CEO, told The Engineer. “We started, at the very beginning of the company, working on drone design to see if we could create the ultimate racer for a sport like this. It needs to balance incredible speed and performance with things that are necessary for a spectator sport, such as visibility and identifiability in the air.”

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