Part 2 appears to have come out today and is more focused on the case for bringing ethanol (after appropriate testing and lobbying) into the IRL and other American racing series.
http://www.evworld.com/databases/printit.cfm?storyid=462 >"It's not going to change the on-track product," he said. "That's the >opportunity. That's why it's attainable. That's why it's easy. It will give >the industry a real strong platform to start saying, 'domestic, renewable, >still high performance.'" -------------- The driver is apparently sponsored in part by the Industry and makes this clear that he does not speak for the sport or the league. Several reasons are given for bringing ethanol to racing. There is one point that I disagreed with: > >"Race sanctioning bodies are constantly working with their rules and formulas >to knock speeds back down. If you were to put the car from methanol to >ethanol, you'd see a horsepower drop," he admitted. But this would have >virtually no impact on the speed of the car. > >"Say you give up 50 horsepower, if you just lay the wing down another half >degree you're going get the speed right back and the car's still going 200 mph >," he noted. -------------------------- I do believe that there's no problem with bringing a lower horsepower fuel to the sport (so far so good), but then the next step shouldn't be to sacrifice safety (change the downforce and concommitant drag) to bring the speeds back up. The speeds are too high as it is, but if the product will be cheapened by a significant loss in speed, then I'm sure other ways can be found to bring speeds instantly back up after a change to a new fuel, rather than by sacrificing safety.. I've always thought that in the various racing venues, with speeds obviously being *way* too high for safety (because after the initial invention of the car we've obviously reached the point where we are capable of engines far too powerful for safety's sake), the way to go was to limit speeds to safer levels, and let manufacturers compete within those limited speeds. So, if bringing ethanol to racing might temporarily bring horsepower somewhat down, then that just doesn't seem like the end of the world. I'm sure in any transition from a well-researched fuel well-known to the teams, to a newer fuel not as well-known to the teams, they might have some challenges to overcome in getting to know it. But I'm sure in just a few short years they'd once again be at speeds that would have the race sanctioning bodies wringing their hands trying to find a way to keep speeds down. Ideally I've always wanted to find a way to suggest defining the rules of an auto race by starting with a more limited amount of energy per team. So, for a 300 mile race, let's say that you get some number of gallons of whatever fuel we're talking about, and that's it, and then let them have a lot more freedom as to how they want to build their engines (keeping a close eye on safety of their build and fuel tank) because it's going to be hard for them to go too fast if they can't have more than that amount of fuel. They'll have to get at least x miles to the gallon of whatever fuel. These rules could obviously be tweaked by changing the amount of fuel. For E-85 you might want a bit more, say, because the BTU content per gallon is lower. In the extreme, you could even have a race where the basic rule is to start with a given number of BTUs of energy and not even limit the technologies. So, a team could have x number of BTUs of E-85 or Methanol or Diesel or Biodiesel or Propane or Electricity stored in batteries, or CNG, or any combination of these or other fuels, it could choose to recycle on board or not (regen braking, regen suspension or other components), and whoever wins, wins. Ok, so it would be more appropriate for a sort of college-enthusiast type race, but why not try it for the big boys? I mean are GM and Toyota and the like afraid of a little engineering competition? At present the established American top-level series don't seem to have much commitment to using made-in-America fuel. Methanol is largely made in Canada, I think, which is not so terrible, but of course using Natural Gas to make it means that we have to import more for our Electricity. I believe that Methanex has some sourcing of Natural Gas from Chile? I wish I knew more about this. I would have thought there would be a push to have the racing series be more "patriotic" in some basic sense. I've seen some of the fans of NASCAR gather 'round the bar and root for their favorite driver, but I haven't yet seen them seem to mind that, if the fuel is gasoline then getting the Oil to make that gasoline means importing some of it from the same regions that have recently brought us the hijackers. I don't know if Phillips Petroleum imports oil from Saudi Arabia, but even if they don't, others have to, so any use of gasoline anywhere drives imports up. This description of NASCAR fuel did prove helpful. http://insiderracingnews.com/jf102102.html Looks like they're very interested in bringing a high quality product to NASCAR. Since 76 has been the most forward-looking in my area in terms of excluding MTBE and possibly including ethanol, maybe they could start bringing ethanol to their racing product as soon as possible, working with the teams to alert them to any engine changes needed so as to maintain durability. Instead of limiting itself to Carbeuration maybe NASCAR could explore the possibility of doing actual stock car racing, and-or making the fuels more relevant, and-or living up somewhat to the idea that racing takes place in part as a way to research technologies for inclusion on the road in passenger cars? >Yep.... the ethanol part is coming up next week... but I know I know a lot >more about the IRL than I did before. :-) > >Bill Moore >> Actually, this part 1 was a disappointment if you're looking for >> ethanol discussion, as it didn't get to that yet, but it looks like >> it's sort of leading up to that next week? I don't know. >> >> http://www.evworld.com/databases/storybuilder.cfm?storyid=461 Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! 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