11/20/06 Racing with Ethanol

Racing with Ethanol. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Race teams push the envelope to gain an edge on performance and speed. Now thanks to the ethanol industry, that envelope is really being stretched. Recently the announcement was made that once again this year the Indy team Rahal-Letterman was powering their cars with ethanol. Tom Slunecka is the Executive Director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council. SLUNECKA: We couldn't be more excited about the opportunity that Rahal-Letterman is working again with ethanol and bringing back Jeff Simmons as our driver. This really puts an explanation point to what has turned out to be one of the most successful promotional efforts in ethanol's history. Literally we are changing the automotive worlds views of ethanol through this program. Slunecka says there are certain issues that need to be addressed when bringing ethanol to racing. SLUNECKA: From a technical standpoint, there's a lot of barriers that need to be crossed. Of course speed, performance is the entire racing platform and with the IRL leading the race world in technology, their adoption and acceptance of the new product went under a lot of scrutiny. So we needed to make sure we had dotted all the "I's" and crossed all the "T's" so that there was no concern from the engineers at IRL to the engineers at Honda and every other component that there was comfort that ethanol will perform. Ethanol may be just what racing need to move to new levels of performance. Slunecka explains. SLUNECKA: It's making this series faster, safer and healthier. Because ethanol gives a 30% increase in fuel economy over methanol, the cars are carrying less fuel; they're safer in the case of an accident. If there is a flame it can be seen whereas methanol burns clear this will burn with a little bit of smoke to it so that it's safer from a fire aspect. Probably most importantly on the safety side is the fact that because they are carrying less of a load and they have increased fuel efficiency the car will remain more stable between pit stops. Because they are carrying less fuel, there's less weight and those will make the car faster. One big benefit is air quality. SLUNECKA: Because ethanol at this high level, nearly 100% is nearly benign to breathe, when these cars are racing literally inches from one another the drivers are breathing cleaner air, the pit crews are breathing cleaner air and even the fans are breathing cleaner air. Slunecka hopes that the public will respond positively to the benefits of ethanol in racing. Team Rahal-Letterman is partly owned by talk show host David Letterman. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.