Thunderstorms Force Collegiate Drone Racing Championship Into One-Day Tulsa Showdown

Thunderstorms and torrential rain turned the Collegiate Drone Racing Championship into a one-day squeeze at SkyWay36 Droneport & Technology Innovation Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but the weather did more than threaten the schedule. It exposed which collegiate pilots could stay sharp when a two-day plan collapsed into a single Saturday and every round suddenly mattered more.

MultiGP had scheduled the 2026 championship for April 11-12, but the full field had to be pushed into April 11, making the event a fast-moving test of briefings, qualifying and bracket racing under pressure. That mattered because this championship is not just about individual speed. CDRA team scores are built from the top three scores on each school’s roster, so depth, consistency and clean race management carry real weight when a team cannot afford a bad run. With 13 universities and more than 60 pilots, it was the largest CDRC turnout yet.

The qualifying sheet showed how thin the margin was at the top. Ari “uptimefpv” Stehney led with a best lap of 48.098 seconds, Kalli “kallifpv” Ames followed at 48.528, and Wesley “wesleyfpv” Park posted 49.241. Joshua “PrincessJ” Lizee was not the quickest in qualifying, clocking 49.830 and starting fourth, but he proved the better racer once the format shifted from outright pace to surviving the full championship grind.

That difference showed up on the final leaderboard. Lizee finished first with 69 points, Park was second with 68, and Antoine “Baxony” Deschenes took third with 67. The top three were separated by just two points, a reminder that one clean lap, one smart line through traffic or one mistake avoided under pressure could decide the title. In a normal weekend, the fastest qualifying time might have looked like the headline. In Tulsa, the championship belonged to the pilot who handled the compression best.

For collegiate FPV, that is the real takeaway. MultiGP says it has more than 30,000 registered pilots and 500 active chapters worldwide, and its STEM Alliance with Drones in School and the Collegiate Drone Racing Association was built to create the next layer of talent. Tulsa fit that mission perfectly. The storm did not soften the championship; it sharpened it, and the result was a better proof of which students can race, adapt and deliver when the sport asks for everything at once.