Slow to Wave 'Green' Flag

NASCAR Faces Challenges in Possible Use of Alternative Fuels

Indianapolis Motor Speedway hosts the biggest race-day crowd in the country twice each year, but the giant oval was built in 1909 as a testing ground for automobile manufacturers.

That was the rationale behind motorsports in its infancy: not to entertain, but to serve as a laboratory that produced technology to benefit the car-buying public. And innovations such as the rearview mirror, front-wheel drive and disk brakes followed.

Fast-forward to 2008 and $4-a-gallon gasoline. Car-buyers are clamoring for energy-efficient vehicles, while policymakers urge less dependence on foreign oil.

But if either is looking to NASCAR to point the way forward, they're in for a wait.

NASCAR Chairman and Chief Executive Brian France pledged in July 2007 to look more aggressively at the possibility of using alternative fuels in the sport's racecars. But after 12 months of study at NASCAR's Research and Development Center in Concord, N.C., the sport is far from deciding which alternative -- whether ethanol blends, diesel, hybrids or a variation to come -- represents the fuel of the future.

"We're not on hold by any means, we're just being very thorough," says Mike Fisher, managing director of the R&D center. "It's not as easy as flipping a switch,"

So today at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, 43 stock cars will hurtle into the first turn of the Allstate 400 burning 98-octane racing fuel and getting roughly six miles per gallon.

NASCAR drivers don't feel the financial pinch at the pump. They get their racing fuel (known as 260 GTX) from Sunoco, which has provided it for free since becoming NASCAR's official fuel supplier in 2004.

Sunoco has sold ethanol-blended gasoline for 12 years and continues to explore other alternative fuels, according to spokesman Thomas Golembeski. But for now, NASCAR and Sunoco believe its high-octane racing fuel is best suited for the high-performing stock cars.

The very notion that NASCAR could be "green" sounds like an oxymoron.

NASCAR's fender-banging spectacle is a celebration of excess -- 850-horsepower engines, earsplitting noise and speeds nearing 200 mph.

But as attitudes toward gas-guzzling vehicles sour and concern for the environment increases, NASCAR runs the risk of being perceived as squandering precious fuel and callous to the environment.