In association with the Congress on Evolutionary Computation 2007. There is a prize of 500 USD to the best competitor, generously sponsored by IEEE CIS (subject to at least five entrants registering for the conference).
Other people who have published papers on learning controllers for various car racing tasks include Ivan Tanev, Pieter Abbeel, Mototaka Suzuki and Benoit Chaperot - tell us if you want to be included in this list.