NASCAR to Return to its Corn Liquor Roots?
Junior Johnson, who knows a thing’er two about corn-liquor (including a present-day legal version), once said of those in that era, “Moonshiners put more time, energy, thought, and love into their cars than any racer ever will. Lose on the track, and you go home. Lose with a load of whiskey, and you go to jail.”
The modern day question will be, minus the jail possibilities, will NASCAR and its race teams benefit in any tangible way by shifting to an E-85 blend of racing gasoline?
General Motors has joined with a couple corn-belt politicians in urging for the change to what amounts to 15% blend of corn-liquor and gasoline.
Brent Dewar, that company
Love the classic foto!
Are you in favor of NASCAR running any Alternative fuel (not being gasoline) like Diesel, Bio-Diesel, or Ethonal?
I sure am, but I don’t know about running E85, 85% Ethonal and %15 gasoline, thats still running gasoline. I would be more in favor of running Diesel or Bio-Diesel, Audi’s in the ALMS does and look at them. Plus using Diesel doesn’t shoot up corn prices.
RD - I could care less what any racing series runs. The change would be meaningless to the planet and is nothing more than a publicly stunt.
And the worse idea being pumped, no pun intended, is corn based ethanol. It’s inefficient, costly and provides less mileage at less power.
I’m going to laugh my butt silly when so much corn is removed from the food chain exports of it, and more importantly gifts to the 3rd world, is drastically cut. Shortly thereafter the U.N. and other bleeding hearts will excoriate the U.S. for it.
Hey Marc, a side benefit of Ethanol and reduced power is………………no restrictor plates! Or speed, or passing, or anything else “racy”.
I’ll still prefer my corn aged and bottled in bond, thank you very much.
Yeah… well. that would be one benys of ethanol, but only in the four plate events each year.
That leaves 34 other events that the drivers already complain the CoT contributes to less passing.
Then add the ethanol…. Oh JOY. A parade… with PCNA bringing up the rear shoveling all the elephant dung.
“RD - I could care less what any racing series runs. The change would be meaningless to the planet and is nothing more than a publicly stunt.”
Other than the actual racing on the track NASCAR is nothing but a big publicity stunt!
There is new technology and research coming out every day on alternative energy and for NASCAR and the world in general to jump on board one particular technology would be premature and fuelish (I couldn’t resist).
wow 1970’s retheoric, how odd when the subject of Ethanol comes up. the food chain. inefficient. as someone that has experimented in Motor sports environment with the fuel I can honestly say 105 octane e85 or 115 octane E100 is a terrificly adaquate motor sports fuel.
it does require ~20% more by volume of fuel due to the less complex carbon chains. but when compared to racing fuel ($6.00-7.00 a gallon) there is no reason NOT to run it and it sucks at below zero temps. but as a racing fuel and substitute it makes perfect sense. it’s a lot better then sitting in the stands huffing in carcinogenic toluene or other”racing” fuel blends.
it will require more frequent fuel stops but that is not really a bad thing in nascar , perhaps they will pit NOT during yellow. as for less power, that’s just asinine. Ethanol makes as much if not more power when a given engine is tuned for it and has the added benefit of charge cooling the intake (look at an alchol circle track car after they finish the intake manifold is frost covered)
It’s amazing how many bitch and moan about the oil companies and then buy into their mis-information. I have data logs of thousands of miles of E85 blending in converted and non converted cars and it always comes out the same. the price difference washes the fuel mileage loss, but the money stays domestic and builds jobs here. how could that not be good?
Now if one more person tells me it uses more energy then it produces I’m going to loose my patience. my laboratory still can generate calculated
145% net energy yield, and produce the fuel for around $2.00 a gallon using retail purchased feed stocks economies of scale increase the total net energy yield to closer to 300% yes I live in Florida where sugar is cheap but the numbers are there. lets stop burring our head in the sand.
Keep in mind I argue this on a strictly financial point, the environmental benefits are an added bonus but I’m a believer that global warming is being blown out of proportion, but hey a few extra million acres of sugarcane and corn consuming CO-2 cant be all bad. I know Florida would love the jobs.
Talk about overblown rhetoric: