Full Throttle

NASCAR’s history is well known to even the most casual observers. As a sport rooted in the mountains and the foothills of the Southern Appalachians it first received national prominence in 1965. That year saw Esquire magazine publish Tom Wolfe’s essay, “The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson,” about Junior Johnson’s Wilkes County exploits.

NASCAR as we all know has come a long way from the days of Johnson performing “bootleg turns” behind the wheel of Ingle Hollow’s quickest, baddest, souped-up liquor-laden whiskey hauler.

Today’s NASCAR is hardly recognizable from the days of yesteryear. But as the woman’s fashion industry is want to point out, “what was on the discount racks yesterday, is on the latest fashion runway today.”

Put another way what goes around, comes around.

Steve Phelps, NASCAR’s chief marketing officer, says what once was hidden in Junior’s trunk may be in the fuel cell of tomorrow’s race cars.

“I’m not definitively going to say that for 2011 we’re going to have ethanol,” Phelps said during a panel discussion at the North America Motor Sports Business Forum. “It’s something that we’re looking at now.”

“Our guys are testing it at this particular point and trying to determine whether that’s right for our series,” he said. “They’re on the engines now. What does it do to different parts? How does the engine run? Does it run cooler, does it run hotter - those types of things. We would certainly not institute a rule change or a fuel change that would affect the racing at all.”

Great, better late to the party than never showing up I say.

The Le Mans series has had great success with Diesel powered cars and the Australian V8 series has made the switch to ethanol with little to no problems.

IndyCar first ran an ethanol/methanol blend of fuel in 2006 and moved to all ethanol the following year. Although it must be noted IndyC­ar dropped it’s use of U.S. based ethanol suppliers for APE­X­-Brasil supplied fuel that created some amount of controversy.

Early this year Kyle Petty said NASCAR’s marketing horsepower might drive alternative fuels into the mainstream for it is also helping consumers get over the image of hippies tinkering with their 1980s Mercedes to make them run on vegetable oil.

“I think once you start seeing alternative fuels show up in places like racing and places where you least expect them, then you don’t think about that guy with the Volkswagen van that runs off of whatever,” Petty said.

True enough, but there’s a problem as evidenced by IndyCar’s switch of suppliers. APE­X­-Brasil and in fact the entire Brazilian ethnanol industry is using sugar, or sugar cane to produce fuel.

The American push for ethanol, mostly driven by politicians in corn producing states in the form of subsidies and the like, has taken million of acres of farm land previously devoted to corn for food to corn for fuel tanks.

The same is true worldwide and there is some anecdotal evidence taking corn out of the food chain has given rise to food riots, protests and shortages of foodstuffs made of corn.

Given all that my question to NASCAR is, why go down that road when ethanol fuel can be had using switchgrass, some forms of algae and many other non food products?

Why NASCAR, why?

While on the subject, why not switch the truck series to some type of bio-diesel? With the new CAFE standards imposed on all American vehicles, particularly on pickup trucks, small to medium size truck producers will be scrambling to meet the new fuel standards.

My bet is a butt load of small trucks will be going the bio-diesel route in the not too distant future. If that assumption is correct NASCAR’s truck series is the perfect venue to promote not only the switch but show how effective bio-diesel can be in a racing environment.