NASCAR moving to ethanol fuel mix for ‘11
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR announced Saturday it will race with E15 fuel in its three national touring series in 2011. Sunoco Green E15 is a 15-percent ethanol blend using American-made ethanol from corn grown by American farmers.
“NASCAR is committed to being an environmental leader, and the sport has taken significant steps over the years toward conservation by introducing measurable, best-in-class initiatives in recycling, alternative energy, and carbon mitigation,” said Brian France, chairman and CEO of NASCAR.
There’s two reasons why NASCAR is moving to the E15 mix: money and retaining manufacturers. It has nothing to do with being “green” or advancing green technology. Sunoco pays NASCAR some big money to provide race fuel to the teams for free in an exclusive contract regarding automotive fuel.
Many of the manufacturers have so called “flex fuel” programing in their EFI programing, like Ford and Chevrolet, so with this addition, those manufacturers can work on improving such technology (within NASCAR’s limits).
The biggest criticism NASCAR has gotten over the years is that they are too far behind in today’s automotive technologies, such as still using carburetors and push-rod engines over fuel injection and OHCs, though NASCAR is switching to EFI sometime in July 2011. The cars are overweight (Cup: 3650 lbs with driver and fuel; Nationwide: 3300 lbs with driver; Camping World Trucks: 3400 lbs), the cars all look the same (thanks to the manufacturers constantly bitching about their competitors advantage and wanting changes), and still use carburetors, among other faults and criticism of the cars.
When it comes to EFI, NASCAR has been reluctant in using it for fear of teams introducing traction control. Seeing that NASCAR has no balls when it comes to issuing severe punishment on cheating teams (due to commecialization of the sport), the only way they can keep traction control out is but issuing standard ECUs, with limited parameters that the teams can modify for different circuits.
Would this be the start of a march by NASCAR towards technological relevance? I don’t see it, unless there’s a major change at NASCAR at the top. However, this will help bring NASCAR a bit more into the 21st century with the introduction of EFI and E15.