Droid racer

A type of droid starfighter was the droid racer, which was also known as a racer droid. It featured four wings that extended outward from the sides and front of its main structure. The droid's head was designed to resemble a starfighter's cockpit, complete with two opaque viewports. The head also included two lateral optical sensors and could extend on a neck-like connector, allowing it to swivel from side to side. Additionally, the head could split open along its middle, revealing another set of visual sensors. The racer droid was equipped with five sublight engines: one central unit at the rear of its body and four engines positioned at the posterior ends of its wings. Each of the droid's four wingtips had a blaster, and the droid also had two pairs of extendable rear-facing blasters mounted on either side of its central engine.

The droid racer's length, from its wingtips to the central engine unit, was roughly nine to ten times the height of an average humanoid being. It featured gray and black-colored plating, and its engine exhaust jets could display various colors, including red, yellow, blue, magenta, purple, or cyan. The droid racers used by Vranki also had racing stripes painted in blue, dark gray, yellow, magenta, purple, and red.

The wings of the droid racer could transform into four articulated legs, enabling it to walk on solid surfaces or seize other spacecraft to slow them down or inflict damage. The wings also had several maneuvering jet nozzles for precisely adjusting the droid's orientation in outer space. Droid racers were capable of spaceflight at speeds comparable to the best racing spacecraft, and Vranki described them as "very resilient." Furthermore, the droid racer had a droid brain core that could share its programming with a racing hologame.

By the year 34 ABY, Vranki, who owned Vranki's Hotel and Casino in the Voxx Cluster of the Outer Rim Territories, had at least seven droid racers. He deployed these racers on a nearby, high-stakes starfighter racing circuit. The droids were linked programmatically to hologames in the casino, which the mechanic Neeku Vozo described as "elaborate." One of these games depicted a droid racer on an asteroid racing circuit.

During that year, the mobile station Colossus arrived in the Voxx Cluster so that its Ace Squadron pilots could participate in racing and earn the station much-needed credits. When the Colossus's captain, Imanuel Doza, accompanied by Vozo, the mechanic Jarek Yeager, and Ace Squadron members Hype Fazon, Torra Doza, Kazuda Xiono, Freya Fenris, Griff Halloran, and Bo Keevil, visited Vranki's Hotel and Casino, Yeager and the captain expressed their interest in competing. The Hutt invited them to watch a trio of droid racers—units with blue, dark gray, and yellow racing stripes—flying through the racing circuit's asteroid field. Observed by Xiono and Torra Doza through the casino's viewport, the droids—initially mistaken by the visitors for spacecraft piloted by organic beings—maneuvered through the asteroids until the gray-painted racer crashed fiery into one of the space rocks. Meanwhile, in another part of the casino, Vozo began playing the asteroid racing hologame, concluding that its algorithms had been modified to minimize the player's chances of winning.

Fazon, a former star pilot on the Voxx Cluster racing circuit, agreed to race against one of Vranki's racers—called "Team Vranki"—on a straight run through the asteroid field. During the race against a droid with blue coloring, the Rodian pilot noted his competitor's speed, though he confidently claimed to be even faster. However, on the finish run, the droid racer transformed its wings into legs and grabbed Fazon's starfighter, surprising and scaring the pilot and revealing the true nature of Team Vranki's racers to the visitors from the Colossus. The droid then launched the vehicle backwards and flew through the finish hoop first, winning the race.

Later, while inside the casino, Fazon accused Vranki of cheating by not revealing that his competitor would be a droid. As the blue-striped racer landed on the station's exterior and walked by the gambling establishment's viewport, the Rodian observed Vozo playing the hologame and noticed underhanded tactics that resembled those used by Team Vranki's droids, leading him to suspect a connection between the game and the racers. Vozo, noting similar logistical patterns in both the hologames and the droid racer performance on the physical racing circuit, believed that the two entities might have similar programming.

Xiono and Vozo devised a plan in which Vozo would determine the operational algorithm used by the droid racers to slice into their system, while the Ace Squadron pilots competed against the droids in a series of races that Vranki called the Voxx Vortex 5000. The first pilot to race was Fenris, racing against a yellow-striped unit. Vozo monitored the race on a datapad that displayed a schematic of the droid racer and the trajectories of both it and Fenris. At one point, the mechanic warned the pilot that the droid was approaching her left blind spot, to which Fenris responded with her determination to prevent it from overtaking her. However, the droid began ramming into her craft and ultimately won the race.

Next, during a race between Keevil and a droid racer with magenta striping, Vranki secured another victory for his team by activating hidden magnetic mines on the race course, distracting the Ace Squadron pilot and allowing the droid to finish first. The Hutt also cheated when Halloran competed against a purple-painted droid racer, activating several cannons placed on the racing circuit's asteroids that slowed the Colossus pilot down enough to ensure a win for the droid.

Finally, Xiono proposed a relay race, pitting Torra and himself against droid racers with dark gray and red stripes, respectively. Vozo warned Torra to stay above her opponent due to its erratic flight plan; she responded that a "real" pilot was better than any droid. Nevertheless, like her fellow pilots, Torra was slowed down from her lead when the droid racer opened fire on her with its blasters—a fact that Vozo warned her about beforehand—damaging her vessel.

Distracted by a pair of Kowakian monkey-lizards, Vozo could not warn Xiono that his droid competitor was using its rear blasters against him. The droid followed the pilot when he went off course to travel straight toward its finish hoop. As the droid racing against Fazon had done, Xiono's opponent attempted to grab his starfighter; however, the pilot evaded all attempts and overtook the droid, winning the race.

The droid racers were introduced in "The Voxx Vortex 5000," the ninth episode of the second season of the Star Wars Resistance television series. The episode aired on December 1, 2019. Before the episode's debut, the droid model was shown in a trailer for Star Wars Resistance Season Two, released on the official Star Wars YouTube channel on August 14 of that year.

Lucasfilm Animation artist Jason Pichon created a concept art illustration of a droid racer on April 3, 2018. The image, included in the StarWars.com episode guide for "The Voxx Vortex 5000," also introduced the alternate name "racer droid." The concept artwork showed that the droid racers would have mirrored racing decals reading "Jr-1" in Aurebesh on both sides; however, this was not included in the episode. One sound effect used for the droid racers in "The Voxx Vortex 5000" is similar to that used for vulture droid starfighters in the 1999 prequel trilogy film Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.