By Sam Tickell

At the forefront - Audi and Peugeot as major manufacturers are pushing the green racing trends

Without a shadow of a doubt, sportscar racing led the green push in the motorsport world and made quite a few PR, competitive and positive business blows in 2008.

Two features stand out – The Michelin Energy Endurance Challenge and the Green Challenge of the Le Mans Series and the American Le Mans Series respectively.

Before we get too far into this article, I will state my personal ‘green’ feelings: I don’t *know* if we have an *environmental* problem or not but what I do know is that oil is a finite resource – it may not run out tomorrow or in 30 years or even 100 years but it will run out so we need to start thinking about that. Two: if there is no problem fine, but what if there is – what if we are wrong and do nothing (compared to what if we are wrong and do something?). And three: the internal combustion engine is old – surely we as humans can come up with something better after all this time.

Ok – for those of you that are left, here goes…

I will start with ALMS’ Green Challenge. Why – because it got the Government on board.

I think it means a lot when the two opposites get together and make a deal – the people trying to protect the environment – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Society of Automotive Engineers International. Here we see a couple of companies that should hate the other companies – but they got together and made something out of it.

The importance of that deal cannot be understated. While the majority of the fans could not care that some team (that team was Corvette Racing and Penske Racing for GT and Prototype classes respectively) won the Green Challenge, you can bet that motorsport manufacturers and motorsport figure heads do.

You know the ones – the guys who run the show and pump an awful lot of money into racing for my and your pleasure.

One important aspect of the ALMS Green Challenge is it incorporated emissions into their calculations. It is forcing the teams and the manufacturers to come up with ways to reduce waste from their cars.

And that is important.

But could it go further – should the Series actually try to make the team’s manufacturer, repair etc their cars in more environmentally friendly ways?

Corsa Motorsports and Zytek have taken on a big job - to make hybrid competitive

Some global reporting schemes have this idea incorporated in them – not only are you responsible for your own company but you are responsible for those in your chain (search for GRI or Global Reporting Initiative – it is a prime example). So that idea could be transposed to the Series – you can only win if you do not create excess waste in the shop, if you use products that are not as harmful to the environment, you paid a carbon tax on your plane ticket and the list could go on.

But they have started and they have some important people on board. The ground work is there and there seems to be excitement in the ALMS for this concept.

It is a lot more than most other pro-sports and auto manufacturers and otherwise seems to be doing. It is a great concept and it had a great debut at Petit Le Mans and it may be the catalyst to help carry the ALMS to the next level.

So what about the Michelin Energy Endurance Challenge?

This is important too. It is quite similar to the ALMS initiative but does not run as deep though the Series.

It does, however carry an automatic entry to the 24 Hours of Le Mans (which Horag Racing won) which gives it a lot of clout. It also provided the early testing ground to make drivers and teams are energy efficient while driving as fast as they can.

In the world of high petrol prices, the easiest way to save money is by altering your driving style (in that respect).

There is no use flogging the car because you won’t earn your enviro points. But this also has the advantage that if teams do need to race harder or something goes wrong, you won’t run out of fuel – as some fans of 1980s F1 may recall when the FIA restricted fuel tank size…

But it does bring back the art of conserving the car while driving at a race winning pace. Skills that endurance drivers should have but may have lost in sprint-pit-sprint trend that dominated racing earlier this decade.

This Challenge does have lofty goals of becoming as important as the results. I think we all know this is not going to happen. The competitive nature of drivers and team owners will never let this happen.

There is something about 8th in class but being excited that you were the most environmentally friendly which just should not catch on in sport – but I guess being happy that you had a ‘top 30 car’ did, so I guess anything can happen

But again this is a step forward to creating a more environmentally friendly sport and attempting to secure its future.

And of course the teams aren’t standing still either and are starting to come up with their own ways of driving technology forward.

Corvette were leaders in making race cars work on Ethanol blend fuels

Audi has clean diesel. Corsa will come in with hybrid power. Peugeot will come with diesel-hybrid power. Eco uses bio diesel. Everyone uses Ethanol.

But Ethanol is not such a big thing anymore. Indycar uses Ethanol. V8 Supercars uses it – I use it – it is yesterday’s news. No one really cares anymore – we got over it in 2006.

And we are getting over the diesel cars – yes they quiet and they are fast – but what will be next. We await the hybrid technology (and we particularly await motorsport making it better – you know for the environment and that one day I might consider, just consider maybe thinking about looking at one to purchase, you know, before I go buy something good). Instead of turning our lights (read minds) off for an hour and thinking we have done a good thing – we should do something useful, something that may fix this problem (should it exist).

But as sportscar moves on and the economy recovers (yes it’s bad now, but didn’t we do ‘this’ or something like it 20 years ago?) more people will want to continue to push more technology forward and we will have an arms race of sort. Maybe we can call it a green power race.

But in any case, the first real steps have been taken. We have had enough of the baby steps – enough with the one make stuff with some sort of crazy engine and we have had enough of the ‘look at us, we use fuel from corn (or sugar)!’

It is time for big boy steps and those have started. We have different ways of generating power, different initiatives. People are on board.

And most importantly, the government is on board.