A revitalized Lola has teamed up with Yamaha to enter Formula E in Season 11 as Nissan commits to Gen4. Along with this big news, I have details on Carbon Positive Motorsport’s new motto and new carbon offsetting programs, how Team BRIT is tackling the sustainability challenge and how the Forze Hydrogen Racing Team is preparing for the 2024 Dutch Supercar Challenge.
All this and much more in this week’s edition of the Sustainable Motorsport Roundup on Motorsport Prospects. Your source for sustainable high performance motorsport news.
Sustainable Motorsport News
Lola Cars has announced that it is returning to global motorsport in a multi-year technical partnership with Yamaha Motor Company and will enter the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship from Season 11.
The iconic, globally renowned motorsport brand, which has more than 500 championship wins, is working with Yamaha to develop and supply a powertrain to compete in the world’s first all-electric, single seater race series.
With track racing deep in the DNA of both Lola Cars and Yamaha, this new technology partnership not only provides an opportunity to join the ABB FIA Formula E World Championship as it moves to the GEN3 Evo platform for the 2024/25 season but also creates opportunities across global motorsport and in the broader zero emissions transportation space.
Mark Preston, Motorsport Director, Lola Cars Ltd: “We are thrilled to confirm our entry in Formula E. For us, this is more than just an opportunity to return Lola to the track, it’s also a fantastic platform for technological development.
“Lola Cars has a decorated history of success in chassis and aerodynamic design. This project will allow us to create a unique electrified platform with a software focus at its core to provide a basis for Lola’s wider plans in defining the future of motorsport technology.
“The partnership is the first of several major projects planned to re-establish the British company as an industry leader in sustainable engineering and motorsport, strategically focusing on three areas of electrification, hydrogen and sustainable fuels and materials.”
SportsCar365 reports that the Automobile Club de l’Ouest has announced that a hydrogen demonstration with multiple cars, including the H24 prototype, will take place prior to the start of this year’s edition of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. As part of the buildup for the 92nd edition of the French classic, “several hydrogen competition prototypes” will take to the Circuit de la Sarthe between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. CET.
“Notably, the ACO has stated that the demonstration will consist of both cars designed with both fuel cells as well as hydrogen combustion engines. So far, the first confirmed participant in the demonstration is the ACO’s own H24 prototype.”
Last weekend’s Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne saw General Admission fan areas powered by zero-emission technology. The Australian Grand Prix Corporation, organizers of the Australian Grand Prix, first implemented the use of EODev GEH2 hydrogen-fuelled generators to power certain areas last year.
These generators offer an alternative to diesel generators, emitting only water and vapour. Last year, they saved approximately two tonnes of CO2 from being released over the four-day event. For 2024’s race weekend, organizers have doubled the number of hydrogen generators, and have added a hybrid generator and two mass battery storage units. Two ovals within Albert Park Grand Prix Circuit will be powered using the EODev GEH2 hydrogen-fuelled generators from Blue Diamond Machinery and Toyota Australia.
Motorsport Australia has retained its FIA Environmental Accreditation Programme three-star level certification for its head office operations. A thorough audit was conducted by the FIA in October last year, which determined that Motorsport Australia had continued to show strong commitment to environmental management and sustainability. The audit also indicated Motorsport Australia has hit its internal targets against energy usage, travel, and waste reduction.
Teresa Xie of Bloomberg looks at why F1, NASCAR and IndyCar street races can be both an economic boon and a big headache. “Going forward, siting more circuits inside or near urban areas could help shrink auto racing’s considerable environmental footprint (which added up to more than 256,000 tons of C02 for F1 in 2019, much of it from travel and logistics). According to F1, half of the fans who attended the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix took public transportation to the recently expanded Circuit Zandvoort, for example — and 30% rode bicycles.”
The FIA Motorsport Games has revealed that Truck Racing is coming to the 2024 event in Valencia, Spain. Teams from the Goodyear FIA European Truck Racing Championship will compete at Circuit Ricardo Tormo, with series regulars expected to be joined by a host of international racers who compete in truck racing championships from around the world.
The Goodyear FIA ETRC was the first-ever motorsport series to successfully switch to a 100% sustainable fuel in 2021, and with the bio-LNG-powered IVECO S-WAY NP pace truck, the championship has reduced its carbon emissions on the race track by up to 92% over the past three years.
In the first of an exclusive two-part interview with Motorsport Week, FIA Formula E’s Vice President of Sustainability, Julia Palle, talks about her role in detail, as well as sharing the achievements and goals that the sport is aiming to reach next.
“My role is to make the purpose and the mission that the Championship has given itself a reality, which is to accelerate sustainable human progress, and translate that into a strategy that gets implemented,” she says.
Carbon Positive Motorsport will move up a gear in 2024, with the launch of new carbon offsetting solutions and activities designed to help raise awareness of how everyone in motorsport can take positive and impactful action to help make motorsport and the environment sustainable for future generations to enjoy.
With a new brand message of motorsport does not need to cost the earth, and an updated positive about motorsport logo that combines a leaf and a flame to represent the capture of carbon, the new developments are designed to create an even greater level of level of positive environmental impact, with increased value of those benefits for competitors, teams, events, brands and sponsors.
Full details of their new carbon offsetting solutions can be found here.
Tunley Environmental has become the latest sponsor to join Team BRIT, embarking on a project to maximize the sustainability of their racing team. They have a team of PhD-level scientists, who work with organizations in a range of sectors to provide innovative and scientific solutions towards decarbonisation.
Tunley Environmental will be conducting a Business Carbon Assessment (BCA) and producing a Net Zero Roadmap, outlining our carbon footprint, and creating a plan to reduce our carbon output.
We will also be measuring the impact of one of our racing vehicles. To do this, we’ll be undertaking a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of our BMW 240i, identifying its carbon impact, ways to reduce it and potential ways to achieve carbon neutrality across our fleet. The BMW was salvaged from the scrapyard in 2022 and re-built to become the competitive racing car it is today. Now, Tunley Environmental experts will help identify the value of this approach and the carbon saving achieved in recycling a vehicle in this way, setting new boundaries of possibility for sustainability within racing.
Team BRIT staff will take part in carbon context and business carbon training sessions, making the project part of day to day life for every member of the team, from drivers to admin staff and team management.
Team BRIT Founder Dave Player explains: “Our impact on the green agenda has been a conundrum that has been part of our thinking for some time now.
“That’s where Tunley Environmental come in – we’re not experts in this, and we certainly don’t want to invest in efforts that have little impact on our carbon footprint. With their expertise, we can ensure we fully understand the impact of our operations, and crucially, the realistic measures we can take to make a difference.
“This isn’t just important for us, it’s important for every race team out there. I truly believe you don’t need to have F1-sized budgets to take this seriously. We’re a small team, but we have big ambitions in everything we do. These ambitions apply to this project in the same way as they do to our racing. We’ll make progress, we’ll see change, and we’ll do everything we can to share what we’ve learned, right across our sector.”
Motorsport and sustainability – our newest challenge
Should we look to sport to solve the world’s issues? That is the question that Global Sustainable Sport poses when looking at the intersection of sport and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
“Sport is a definitely a platform to use. It’s not the only one, but it is a way in which both environmental sustainability and the SDGs can be communicated more broadly,” according to Brian McCullough, an Associate Professor in Kinesiology and Sport Management, and Director of the Center for Sport Management Research and Education at Texas A&M University.
“We tend to think of sport as the magic pill that is going to fix everything, but it’s still an effective tool to communicate with people, to connect with people, to make it more relatable to people, especially if they are participating in sport or experiencing the negative consequences – for example the impact of climate change on sport.”
Sport and the SDGs: Should we expect sport to solve the world’s issues?
Sustainable Motorsport Tech
One of Ford Performance’s goals with its Electric Vehicle Demonstrators has been to redefine what’s possible in racing with electric powertrains. With the Ford Mustang Cobra Jet EV demonstrator, the brand has accomplished that twice.
The electric Mustang broke the world record for the quickest and fastest 1/4-mile pass with a full-bodied, fully electric car with a blistering time of 7.759 seconds at 180.14 miles per hour at the NHRA Winternationals at Pomona, California over the weekend.
ABB’s Oliver Johnson discusses ABB’s Formula E partnership and how the company is revolutionising commercial electrification testing 
The Forze Hydrogen Racing Team, affiliated with the Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, is using Cruden’s Panthera Simulator Software to advance its energy management strategies for its hydrogen race car, set to compete in the 2024 Dutch Supercar Challenge.
Dennis Marcus, commercial manager of automotive and motorsport at Cruden, said, “Forze was using a basic simulator package that was only beneficial for track learning. Since driver-in-the-loop simulation is key to developing and tuning race cars, Forze decided to implement Panthera Simulator Software, via which they are now running the Forze vehicle dynamics and powertrain models on their simulator.”
Series News
With Nissan becoming the first manufacturer to commit to Formula E’s GEN4 car, BlackBook Motorsport speaks with Formula E CEO Jeff Dodds and CMO Henry Chilcott to explore how the all-electric series has become more combative in its messaging, and why it has chosen now to proactively make more comparisons with Formula One.
“I worry for the sport because Formula One has never been less competitive than it is now,” Jeff Dodds, chief executive of Formula E, explains to BlackBook Motorsport.
“I believe motorsport fans are turning off because of that, and that hurts all of us in motorsport. However, if you’re a motorsport fan and you don’t like team or single driver dominance, or you don’t like the lack of a sustainable focus, come and look at us because we deliver in all those things.”
This isn’t necessarily a case of Formula E looking to antagonise Formula One. In Dodds’ words, “if Formula One is successful, that’s good for us”. But the idea is that the size and profile of the world’s biggest motorsport series can only help to elevate that of Formula E by association.
“If Formula One is not successful, and more fans switch off from motorsport, that’s bad for us,” Dodds continues. “I want Formula One to be successful, but I am going to use them to highlight what I think are our strengths.”
Competitive racing, street circuits, and a US$250k bet: Why Formula E is making more noise about F1 than ever before
While DHL extends its logistics collaboration with MotoGP, it has also entered into a multi-year collaboration with MotoE. “As we embark on this exciting journey with MotoE, we’re thrilled to showcase our commitment to sustainability and innovation. The partnership underscores DHL’s dedication to advancing e-mobility while delivering excellence on and off the track,” says Elliott Santon, Head of Global Sponsorships at DHL Express.
Organizers of the STCC have released images of the ongoing work to produce the twelve cars that will be used this season when the series switches to electric power for the first time. EPWR is currently hard at work on three Tesla Model 3, three BMW i4, three CUPRA Born and three Volkswagen ID.3 models, with the VW being the only one yet to be revealed to the public.
“Production is running at high pace,” Micke Jansson, CEO of EPWR said, “and we look forward to the next big step, delivering the racing cars to the teams before the season – a key part of our work together with STCC to create a climate-smart future for national motorsport.”
NXT Gen Cup, the world’s first 100% electric junior touring car cup, extends its successful cooperation with SCHUNK, the international leader in toolholding and workholding, gripping and automation technology. SCHUNK will extend its presence during the NXT Gen Cup race weekends in 2024 when the championship goes fully international together with the ABB FIA Formula E and DTM, this as part of SCHUNK’s strategy of recruiting young talents within the tech industry.
Author: Mark Boudreau
Mark is the publisher of Motorsport Prospects. As a former lawyer, he applies his legal background and research skills to assist race drivers by showcasing the resources they need to make their motorsport careers happen.