America?s sports car racing series embraces being green again

Back in 2008, the series partnered with SAE International, the US Department of Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency to create the Green Racing Challenge, a race-within-a-race that looked at energy consumption and carbon emissions as well as sheer lap time to determine who went the farthest, fastest, and most cleanly.The program survived the 2013 merger between the ALMS and another series, Grand-Am, but sadly came to an end of sorts in 2016 when the series aligned itself with a Le Mans rulebook that mandated E20 rather than cellulosic E85 as the gasoline/ethanol blend of choice. "We were the first racing series to form partnerships with DOE and EPA, and we're making IMSA a leader in reducing the environmental impact of our sport," he said at a press conference held at this year's Detroit Grand Prix at the end of May.In the past, the Green Racing Challenge was only for one of the GTLM class, contested by road-based machines like Corvettes, Ferraris, and Porsche 911s. Budgets have to be kept in check, but using a spec hybrid system undermines any potential claim to be facilitating technology transfer from track to street.) Further down the road, Atherton suggested that there could well be a role in IMSA for electric touring cars or even electric prototypes in the series.In addition to hybrid DPi cars, Atherton revealed that IMSA's current tire partner, Michelin, and its fuel supplier, VP Racing Fuels, will be working together as part of the program. Ideally would be with introduction of the next-generation DPi, but that seems very aggressive today," he said.Further ReadingGetting to know the 1,000hp hybrids of the World Endurance ChampionshipAt this point, some readers might be angrily preparing a comment to point out that a race series' carbon footprint is much larger than just the race cars burning fuel on track.