Uhlík vs Křemík · Czech podcast about artificial intelligence

From Formula 1 to drones: Tomáš Richtr on where AI helps and where it frightens

Episode 4 · 4 March 2026 · 1:18:11 · Guest: Tomáš Richtr

Tomáš Richtr commentated Formula 1 for sixteen seasons and today heads the AI division of the Czechoslovak Group (CSG AI). On the Uhlík vs Křemík podcast with Adam Hanka and David Salomon, he talked about how artificial intelligence helps racing teams, when drones will take off and why adults should give children more time.

Formula 1 as a laboratory

According to Richtr, AI is already at home in Formula 1. Thanks to it, teams understand data from computer simulations, the wind tunnel and sensors on the track faster, and sooner reach the point where the results match. A car has, he says, around 300 sensors and sends gigabytes of data to data centres every minute.

A strategist used to have five or six scenarios in Excel in case of rain or a crash, today the scenario is ready instantly. When a driver gets a penalty, the team checks a database of thousands of earlier stewards' decisions to see whether an appeal makes sense. The decision, however, always stays with a human. Richtr says this needs to be drummed into children above all: "No, artificial intelligence offered you that, so that you would think about it."

Races of autonomous cars already exist, for example the Autonomous Racing League series, but so far the human driver wins. According to Richtr, the machine's gap to a human shrank year on year from roughly 13 seconds to 1.2 seconds, though he himself warns that the figures are not exact. Drivers like Max Verstappen, he says, still improvise faster in an unexpected situation.

Drones in controlled corridors

According to Richtr, drones of large companies such as Alza will start flying first, perhaps within a year. Hobby pilots, whom his company calls "hobíci", will get their turn in two to three years, by his estimate. Flights will take place in controlled corridors called U-space. A pilot will request a flight plan through the app of a licensed company and get permission within tens of seconds, without applying to the Air Navigation Services (ŘLP) or the Civil Aviation Authority. Richtr's company is working on such a project.

"It's not entirely in its infancy, because it's not a technical problem, it's a regulatory problem," he says. He compares managing the airspace to international waters: someone has to make sure the drones don't collide and that the space can be closed when firefighters or police intervene.

When the machine decides on its own

Richtr considers military use a frightening area. Because of navigation jamming, unmanned machines are learning to resist interference and can carry their own small local language model that knows their mission. In the extreme, he can imagine such a machine completing a combat mission without human confirmation and perhaps misjudging whether it is aiming at a school or a military target. Adam Hanka adds that drones already have the necessary hardware.

According to Richtr, the CSG group is not really creating AI products. Its companies extend what they have done for years, such as aircraft maintenance, with AI capabilities. Based on an aircraft's history, the system suggests what to replace during an inspection and helps plan people, materials and space, so the aircraft returns to service sooner. Instead of cybersecurity, he prefers to talk about the cyber resilience of a product. Subscriptions to the big AI tools will, he believes, get more expensive, because the companies' revenues don't yet cover their investments.

More time for children

To close, Richtr advises protecting children. He doesn't want to tear them away from technology, what matters to him is balance and making sure technology doesn't overrun the natural pace of their development. He doesn't trust time limits in apps, the limit, he says, should be enforced by the parent. "It's about us adults, who are now all the more under that huge pressure, giving those children more time, full stop."

He also fears that the new tools will further widen the social gap between those who can use them and everyone else. He sees the way forward in a return to social values led by the elites rather than in the macroeconomic measures Adam Hanka talks about.

The full interview with Tomáš Richtr is available on the Uhlík vs Křemík podcast.

The episode is in Czech. Czech page with chapters, quotes and the full transcript