I realize this is probably an April Fools' prank, but I'm guessing that a race around a fixed track would actually be a great way to test autonomous cars: you don't need to worry about pedestrians, bicyclists, stoplights, pets, traffic laws, etc; all you have to do is focus on driving and turning at high speeds, and on the other cars on the track.
I don't know. How often do you drive a car without having to worry about pedestrians, cyclists, stoplights or traffic laws? If I'm going to test an autonomous car, I'm going to do mimic real-world situations in my test environment.
The more I think about it, the less likely this is to be real. Normal day to day driving is actually incredibly easy. But racing requires intense and constant concentration and quick reactions.
I don't think it would. Because part of racing is gambling on the other driver to back off when fighting for position. And when I say "gambling", there are a lot of very human factors involved in trying to figure out an opponents likely behavior. It's not like chess.
Above all racing requires situational awareness, which computers are very bad at. For ordinary driving scenarios the bar on situational awareness is fairly low, but that bar goes way up in racing.
