It's kind of hard to believe that motor fuel should be generating so much interest this spring … except for screams about the price of gasoline.
Last week, you may remember, we talked about the difference between the gasoline you can buy at the corner station and the Sunoco Racing Gasoline used by NASCAR teams.
The special racing fuel is leaded gasoline but pressure is being put on NASCAR to find a way to start using unleaded fuel in its cars.
This week comes another story about racing fuel. The announcement was made that the Indy Racing League will start using ethanol as fuel next season.
Since the 1970", open wheeled racing in U.S. series has used methanol. Methanol is an alcohol fuel derived from natural gas, making it a petrochemical.
Methanol was chosen to replace gasoline in such series because it is much less volatile, making it safer. It does not ignite as easily and is less explosive.
But it still is a fossil fuel.
A number of Midwestern interests had been pressuring the IRL to switch to grain based ethanol. Ethanol is distilled from grain mash, usually from corn. According to Associated Press, the states that produce most of the U.S. ethanol are: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Tennessee.
AP says there are 87 plants in the nation with another 14 about ready to go online.
Currently, those 87 plants put out 3.5 billion gallons and the IRL would only use about 160 thousand gallons in a season.
The change would be a symbolic gesture to try to show the public that ethanol can be a high performance fuel that can propel cars around the track at 220 mph.
Driver Paul Dana said that there will have to be some adjustment in IndyCar engines. He explained that ethanol burns hotter than methanol.
He noted that some alterations will be necessary to the engines because it produces a little less horsepower than a comparable amount of methanol.
Next year, IRL fuel will be 90 percent methanol and 10 percent the newer ethanol. In 2007, it will be all Ethanol. Dana noted that, in this era of computer managed engines, the changes are most likely to involve software rather than actually changing anything in the fuel injection system.
The methanol industry, however is not taking this lying down. Gregory Dolan, vice president for the Methanol Institute, said that he expects IRL teams will find fuel costs will go up.
In that, it will be just like the fuel we put in our cars.