The checkered flag dropped at the Le Mans Series Toyota Grand Prix this weekend, and the most efficient, least carbon-emitting cars dominated the standings for the fourth year in a row.

The Muscle Milk Pickett Racing team won the race with its High Performance Development Honda prototype and won the Michelin Green X Challenge, an award given to one team at the end of every American Le Mans Series (ALMS) race based on its vehicle’s environmental performance.

Now six of the eight winners at Long Beach in both the Prototype and Grand Touring (GT) categories have also taken victory in the Michelin Green X Challenge since the award program was launched.

“The fans think of green as being slow, but actually it’s really quite the opposite,” said Silvia Mammone, motorsports manager with Michelin.

“The Green X Challenge is about being clean and efficient, but also to be fast,” Mammone said. “Car manufacturers are now very involved and want to win the award at every race because it shows they’re producing parts and cars that are fuel-efficient, and that transfers to the products they’re putting out on the show floor.”

…Some advances on the racetrack have already trickled down into mass production.

Audi, for instance, pioneered the direct injection gasoline engine for its R8 prototype racer in 2000, which was one of the most successful prototypes in Le Mans history. Today, the same direct injection technology, which uses less fuel, is found in Ford EcoBoost engines that deliver up to 20 percent better fuel economy and 15 percent less carbon dioxide emissions.    READ MORE

“Pulling tractors perform so well on biodiesel, it’s a perfect way to show farmers biodiesel’s benefits,” said USB Communications Chair Jimmy Sneed, a soybean farmer from Hernando, Miss. “It’s important to remind farmers that using soybean oil for biodiesel is one of the components that determines the value of each bushel we grow. It makes sense for soybean farmers to use their own products and promote biodiesel.”

Under the co-sponsorship, tractors in the NTPA’s Light Pro Stock division will run on biodiesel. So these pullers will put biodiesel to the test all season long.

…The soy checkoff also established other partnerships to promote biodiesel. Later this year, the checkoff will sponsor the National Truck Driving Championships, a trucking competition that attracts tens of thousands of representatives from that industry. Additionally, the checkoff partners with Clean Cities coalitions; assorted state, county and regional fairs; and the tractor pulls at the National Farm Machinery Show to promote the use of biodiesel, Bioheat and other soy-based products.  READ MORE

Recognizing the gradually growing demand for E85 in motorsports, VP Racing Fuels today introduced its new C85 racing fuel, offering significant performance gains over conventional E85 from the pump, according to Jim Kelly, VP’s Director of Racing Fuel Sales.

…“When you don’t know if you’re getting 60% ethanol, 80% ethanol or something else, it’s extremely difficult to tune,” Kelly continued. “Many engine builders have cited up to a two-jet swing in their tune from one batch of E85 to the next. By contrast, C85 is blended with the same degree of care and precision as every other VP fuel, with a consistent proportion of ethanol and every other component in every drum. It takes all the guesswork out of tuning.”  READ MORE

The Driving Innovation Team rode a unique turbo-charged, 800cc diesel powered Track Motorcycle manufactured in Holland.  READ MORE

It came shrouded in a black tarp. By the time it drove away, it had shattered every conception of what a future high performance car should be.

As readers of Advanced Biofuels USA’s Green Racing articles know, Ben Bowlby introduced the DeltaWing concept in 2010 with the battle cry, “Half the weight, half the horsepower, half the fuel consumption, same performance.”  The naysayers scoffed, and the folks who run the Indianapolis 500 said no. This was but a temporary setback.

The innovative French people who run the legendary, and exceptionally grueling, 24 Hours of Le Mans said yes. “Build it,” they said in June of 2011, “and it will have a place at the start in June 2012.” One year to turn a daring concept into car that will go safely 200 mph?

Racing legend and 1967 Le Mans winner Dan Gurney said it must, and would be done. He turned all the resources of his company, All American Racers over to the DeltaWing project. Nissan joined up with a stock based 1.6L engine as did Michelin tires.

The shroud came off. There it was. Black carbon. Room for two. A narrow front with  tiny tires. No wings or other appendages that clutter modern Formula One race cars and their kin. It looked simple, really. Sort of like a SR-71 Blackbird built for the road.

The crowd cheered, and took lots of photos. From every angle possible.

Team driver Marino Franchetti put on his helmet and got in the car like everything was normal. The engine fired up. Wait. Where’s the roar? Aren’t high performance racers loud and ferocious sounding? Remember what Ben Bolwby had said about half the power? The 4-cylinder Nissan turbocharged, direct injected engine with variable valve timing (yes it’s one of those “eco” type engines) sounded like a Nissan Juke with the muffler off. The engineers looked at the computer screens and said all systems were go.

And go it went. Into the future.   READ MORE

(Our Green Racing guy, Bob Kozak, will return from the future to the present soon to give us a complete rundown on DeltaWing and what it means for everyone who had anything to do with cars or fuels.)

And the Dyson Mazda Lola, winner of the 2001 ALMS prototype championship, will be running on bio-butanol for the third straight year.

The commitment to 2^nd generation ethanol will be season long for ALMS and will be a major component of the Green X Challenge championship as well.   READ MORE

…  (Illinois corn farmer, chairman of NCGA’s NASCAR Advisory Committee Martin) Barbre said with three races down in the Nationwide season, Dillon is already exceeding their expectations. “He ranks second in driver points in his rookie season and is proving to be a great spokesperson for the performance, economic and environmental benefits of Sunoco Green E15,” said Barbre. “Educating fans about the importance of NASCAR’s switch to a 15 percent blend of ethanol, from an environmental, performance and even patriotic standpoint, will reinforce the importance of the NASCAR Green message while helping the sports broad fan base become better acquainted with the benefits of the fuel produced by family farmers such as myself.”  READ MORE

Paul Dana knew “it” wasn’t about him, the IRL or even racing. It was an opportunity for the ethanol industry to “shift gears,” and promote ethanol for what it IS, instead of what it is not. Racing shows people ethanol is a high-octane performance fuel, and gives us the opportunity to drive home other benefits.

The best list is still the one that was written on the side of Paul’s first IRL car. It said simply: “Ethanol: Clean. American. Renewable.”  READ MORE

Backing up that message is the fact that NASCAR made no changes to the engines and very few changes to the vehicles overall to prepare for its switch from unleaded gasoline to E15, says Mike Lynch, director of green innovation for NASCAR. The only change to NASCAR racecars from 2010 to 2011 was a new fuel cell. Basically, racecars don’t have a hard gas tank like passenger cars—they use a bag supported by a structure. As a precaution, this container was swapped out for an alcohol-compatible component. “That’s not an engine performance component at all, it’s literally the gas tank,” he says. “Otherwise, under the hood, we were all good with where we were before.”

…Thanks to ethanol, racecar drivers saw a 5 to 10 percent increase in horsepower, depending on the race and the conditions. And, although critics often gleefully point to the fact that ethanol has one-third the energy density of gasoline, NASCAR really didn’t see a big loss in mileage, Lynch adds, saying the decrease wasn’t anything of note.  “One of the things that makes it conducive to ethanol, without any adjustment whatsoever, is the higher compression ratio than would be typical for any street car,” he says. “It’s a 12 to 1 compression ratio, which is really key to taking advantage of the higher octane characteristics of ethanol and an ethanol blend.”

…NASCAR has three partners in rolling out fuel injection—McLaren Electronic Systems, Freescale Semiconductor and Bosch.  Basically, says Steve Nelson, Freescale’s director of marketing for the Americas, it’s about bringing electronics into NASCAR racecars.

…Computerized fuel injection will allow for rapid and real-time adjustments that will add up to reductions in emissions and increased fuel efficiency. “The more electronics you put in, the more control you have,” he says.

…Second, fuel injection will help connect racecars with the passenger vehicles fans drive every day. “The customer sees ethanol at the pump, they see ethanol at the track, and now they see fuel injection at the track,” he says, adding that the electronics in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series racecars are the same as the ones that go into passenger cars.   READ MORE

DaveSchenker and his mother, Rebecca Carlson, explain Greenspeed's record-breaking veggie oil powered diesel truck at the Washington, DC Auto Show. Photo R.Kozak

Currently working with Dave Schenker on this project are Patrick Johnston, mechanics and fabrication; Mike Van Kirk, lighting and electrical; Adrian Rothenbuhler, electrical and mechanical; Seth Feuerborn, modeling and mechanics; Ken Fukumoto, treasurer; Jenny Kniss, crew chief and safety.

They are looking forward to joining other speed freaks in August 2012 at Speedweek on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, working to break the 215 mph world land speed record for all vehicles in the Diesel Truck classification.  To put this in perspective, Mike Journee on NewWest.Net reminds us that “Fewer people have gone 200 mph on land than have stood atop Mount Everest.”

And all this with raw biofuel.

Credit Schenker and club alumna and mechanical engineering student Jozey Mitcham with the initial fundraising and piecing together of the race truck.

As Jalopnik explains, “Team leader, Boise student Dave Schenker says his inspiration to play with diesel engines sprang from Rudolph Diesel’s original idea — to run farm equipment on fuel farmers could grow themselves.”

Schenker’s history of home-schooled education serves as a foundation to his dedication to a club formed to “give students the opportunity to gain real life experience working in an interdisciplinary environment while designing, building and racing a vegetable oil powered vehicle.”

To run on vegetable oil, that oil must first be heated in a specialized tank.  Other modifications made over two and a half months during the summer of 2011 focused on giving the engine enough horsepower and the truck enough chassis strength and weight to achieve high speeds.

The members of Greenspeed use their Class C driving and engine licenses with the Southern California Timing Association to run in the Diesel Truck classification.

Although they started with vegetable oil, the club anticipates using other alternative fuels, perhaps connecting with other energy research conducted at Boise State.  READ MORE and MORE (New West Energy) and MORE (Jalopnik) and MORE (Landspeed Louise)