2008 News Archive Article \\
Fantastic ‘Green Challenge’ performance by Drayson-Barwell
5th October 2008
The Drayson-Barwell American Le Mans Series team yesterday contested the inaugural ‘Green Challenge’ competition, held as part of the ALMS Petit Le Mans 1000-mile race at Road Atlanta, Georgia. The Green Challenge is a race-within-a-race competition in which all cars are scored on overall performance, fuel efficiency and environmental impact.
Due to the fact that the team uses environmentally-friendly ‘2nd Generation’ E85 bio-ethanol fuel, we were one of the favourites to challenge for overall honours in this prestigious trophy. The competition was conceived by and established by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Energy (DOE) in conjunction with SAE International, the world’s leading automotive engineering organisation. The Green Challenge encourages and rewards competitors who can go the farthest the fastest with the smallest environmental footprint.
Paul Drayson and the Drayson-Barwell team lived up to their Green Challenge billing from the outset of the 1000-mile / 10 hour Petit Le Mans event. Even though we had to battle the mighty factory Corvette GT1 team, our major Challenge competitors who also run on E85, we were fighting for the lead with them throughout the race.
The winner of the Green Challenge is decided by the car that scores the lowest Green Racing Achievement Score (GRAS). This number, which has no units, is calculated with the following equation:
GRAS = Performance Energy Coefficient + Petroleum Displacement Coefficient + Greenhouse Gas Coefficient
All of these values are calculated by using the GREET value of each fuel. The GREET (Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, Energy used in Transportation) value is provided by the Argonne National Laboratory for each fuel used, and will balance out the difference between performance, efficiency and emissions.
Such was our pace and efficiency that half way through the race we took the lead of the Green Challenge, and were on course for a historic victory in such a ground-breaking trophy to be awarded in an international motor race. Some technical problems with the car hindered our progress, however, and allowed one of the Corvettes to creep ahead in the Green Challenge by a slender margin. After a hard fought race, we were still delighted to claim the runner up spot out of a total of 38 top class entries for the American Le Mans Series’ Blue Riband event.
"The Green Challenge is the future of motorsport: exciting, innovative and relevant,” comments Paul Drayson. “ Finishing runners up in the first ever green challenge race is a great result for Drayson-Barwell - I'm really pleased. We've shown you can be fast and green at the same time"
Team chief Mark Lemmer said: “This is a fantastic achievement for the team. The lessons we learned last year in developing the highly successful, race-winning Aston Martin DBRS9 – running on E85 – have allowed us to tune our new Vantage GT2 into a highly efficient racing machine. Finishing runner-up in this prestigious event is a fitting reward for the team’s pioneering efforts.”
