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Mike Waters' Blog: 7 April 2009 - The race to be more efficient
Date: 07 April 2009
With the Formula 1 season beginning in Melbourne in spectacular fashion motorsport fans have had a first taste of this season's line-up of cars.
It's a fair bet that as Jensen Button roared off the grid into first place, the last thing on the mind of spectators was fuel consumption or carbon emissions. These machines are about power and speed - something that we just don't associate with environmental performance.
So it is a reflection of the growing importance of the environment in vehicle maufacture that green technology is beginning to infiltrate modern motorsport.
Of couse, there are the niche examples such as the 3000km World Solar Challenge in Australia. The University of Cambridge has a solar-powered car taking part, which impressively can cruise at 60mph using the same power as a hairdryer. However, what's potentially more interesting is that green efficiencies are working their way into more mainstream racing.
In an attempt to show the motor industry that it is possible to build a credible racing car using sustainable components, a team from Warwick University has built a Formula 3 race car designed and made from sustainable and renewable materials. The steering wheel is made from a polymer derived from root vegetables: potato starch helps to make the wing mirrors and the car uses plant oil-based lubricants and a biodiesel race-calibrated engine.
This car helps to prove that sustainable and renewable materials have a role to play in vehicle innovation while separately Sir Richard Branson, the latest big name sponsor in F1, is promoting the "championing of green technology" by motor sport so it appears that speed can be sustainable.
What's more, this season F1 cars do feature green technology. Energy-saving kinetic energy-recovery systems (also known as Kers) have appeared in the cars. This basically involves the use of a battery, which stores energy that would have been wasted under braking, giving drivers access to an extra burst of power with the push of a button on the steering wheel.
For any of you that aren't international racing drivers you're probably thinking that this is all very interesting but what does it mean to me. Well, actually quite a lot because many of the innovations that we see today in F1 and other tiers of motor racing work their way into our everyday cars later down the line.
The fact that these teams are taking up the environmental mantle supports the pace of development in green transport and provides a glimpse of things to come.
