Winning the Green Challenge: Corvette Racing’s Greatest Victory
By Tom Wallace
GM Global Vehicle Chief Engineer for Performance Vehicles
As an amateur sports car racer, Corvette chief engineer, and rabid racing fan, I’ve seen more than my share of winner’s circle ceremonies. I never thought I would see the day when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, and SAE International, the world’s leading automotive engineering organization, were awarding trophies at an auto race. I saw it happen on Oct. 4 at the conclusion of the American Le Mans Series’ Petit Le Mans sports car race at Road Atlanta in Braselton, Ga. And I’m proud to say that General Motors and Corvette Racing, Chevrolet’s factory team, received the winner’s trophies in the inaugural Green Challenge.
The Green Challenge was a “race within a race” during the 1,000-mile endurance event. The four ALMS classes made up of 37 high-tech race cars all took part. Racing is all about getting to the finish line first, but on this night it was also about performance, fuel efficiency and environmental impact.
Working with the EPA, DOT and SAE, the series organizers and the Argonne National Laboratory created a formula that calculated the winning entries in the Prototype and GT classes based on energy used, greenhouse gases emitted, and petroleum fuels displaced. In short, the Green Challenge recognized the fastest car with the smallest environmental impact.
Corvette Racing is America’s premier sports car racing team. Since its debut in 1999, the team has won eight consecutive ALMS championships and 73 races, including five class wins in the prestigious 24 Hours of Le Mans. From my perspective, winning the Green Challenge is the team’s most significant achievement to date.
After nearly 10 hours of racing, the No. 3 Compuware Corvette C6.R driven by Johnny O’Connell (Flowery Branch, Ga.), Jan Magnussen (Denmark), and Ron Fellows (Canada) posted the best overall score in the Green Challenge. In fact, the Corvette’s score was 50 percent better than the Porsche that won in the Prototype division.
Don’t think the Green Challenge was an economy run with drivers pussyfooting around the track to save fuel. Speed mattered, and it was a full-throttle, flat-out race before a record crowd. The class-winning GT1 Corvette completed 365 laps on the Road Atlanta course, averaging more than 95 mph for nine hours and 41 minutes.
I’ve never been prouder of General Motors and Corvette Racing than when Steve Wesoloski, the head of GM’s road racing programs, accepted the manufacturer and team trophies on the victory podium. It culminated a plan that began in January at the North American International Auto Show when Ed Peper, North American Vice President, Chevrolet, announced that Corvette Racing would use cellulosic E85 ethanol racing fuel in the 2008 season.
The important thing to know about the E85R fuel used by the Corvette race cars is that it is primarily cellulosic ethanol, made from wood waste collected in the Black Hills National Forest as part of a wildfire prevention program. Dead trees, broken branches and undergrowth that would otherwise be burned are converted to cellulosic ethanol at KL Energy’s plant in Wyoming. The conversion plant is energy self-sufficient, and actually supplies surplus electricity to the power grid.
Since the Green Challenge formula considered the overall environment impact of the fuel used from “well to wheel,” the decision to use second-generation cellulosic ethanol in the Corvette race cars’ 7-liter GM small-block V-8 engines was decisive in the Green Challenge victory. In fact, the greenhouse gas emissions for the winning Corvette was 170 percent better than the first non-E85 finisher in the GT class.
GM engineers and the race team analyzed every aspect of the race cars to minimize energy use by reducing friction, aerodynamic drag, and rolling resistance. They worked with our technical partners on lubricants to reduce power losses in the engine and drivetrain. They used sophisticated computational fluid dynamics programs to refine the body shape. They developed tires that trimmed rolling resistance without sacrificing traction.
Corvette Racing’s success in the Green Challenge proved the validity of E85 as a good choice for those of you who drive some of the 3 million GM flex-fuel vehicles on the road today. There is no silver bullet to our nation’s energy challenges, but nothing has done as much as ethanol to offset oil demand. It’s a practical solution being implemented today while we continue to develop promising new technologies for tomorrow. In the race to protect and preserve the environment, there is no finish line.
- Posted in Cars & Trucks, LeMans
Michael Comer
Great Job getting the Green Flag at both the starting wave off AND at the ending Victory Lap. What compression ratio does consistant use of E-85 permit? Can streetable engines have higher C.R. and protect themselves against E-10 with spark control and/or cam phasing? Again, Congratulations
James N.
E85’s octane rating is 100 to 105. It’s like old school racing fuel. You should be able to run 12 to 1 on it without any problems. It makes it real easy to find racing fuel for all us old school hot rodders with our toys.
motorman
James N you will need to have your carb recalibrated to use E85 and if you have a holley carb several companies sell a conversion kit.
Gerard
That’s all fine and dandy, but let’s get to the real point: Is Motor Trend right? Will we have to wait until 2014 for the C7? And will it really have a turbocharged V-6?
getalifeagain
The preliminary, proposed merger of GM and Chrysler is a bad idea. It will cause cuts in jobs, and more concessions for the remaining workers. Retirees may suffer too.
Not only that, but there would be duplicate manufacturing facilities and too many overlapping of like vehicles.
There are other reasons it is a bad idea and I am against it.
Rock
Time out! Time out!
‘Vette E 85, Camaro, Quality, etc.. are good themes for blogging, when things are doing fine for everyone…and they are not! For sure those are good cars to dream about…if we can keep up our jobs!
It is about time to have some postings or blog videos from our top leadership, explaining about this merger thing with Chrysler, Ford …whatever….that will for sure put many jobs at risk. And is in everyones head today!
Go Faster GM!
John R
While it is great to see GM racing Corvettes and being GREEN, it would be nice if GM took what they learned and understand what effects even E-10 gas has on your own products. Your race vettes do not have to worry about EPA or smog functions, nor does the engine even have to function for more then a few races.
As owning and also working on Corvettes, most are used for grass roots racing I see a real surge of Corvettes running poorly due to use of E-10
My own 1999 C5 500 HP LS1 when getting bad tank of E-10 within 20 miles of fillup go from a perfect +/- 2% fuel trims to plus 25 lean.
Adding gas treatment or octane booster products do not correct the problem.
Most cases the signs of E-10 are seen using a OBD-II scanner on C5 and C6s where the Long Term Fuel trims are reporting the maximum allowed +25 % lean while other feedback sensors report correctly.
Corvette owners feel surging and lack of power when engine goes into power enrichment mode. Add boost like supercharger and the problem is felt even worse.
In researching this indepth I find that gas suppliers buy fuel from different sources due to some gas makers not making E-10 but the state car is in requires E-10 thus different brands of fuel are being bought and mixed where each gas maker uses different compounds that when mixed have bad effects overall.
In talking to Chevy dealers they say they see a high increase of cars coming in with powertrain issues and have to empty the gas tanks.
In fact it has been seen when a dealer sells a new car and fills the gas tank before giving the car to new owner that shortly contacts the dealer wanting to reverse the car purchase as new car running badly. Ends up it was the E-10 gas.
In talking with testlabs that test gas have told me many gas samples sent to them have shown the corn based E-10 mixed by suppliers causes the different gas makers compounds to mix and create unwanted end results.
Thus even new GM cars/light trucks are not designed to function well with this green world, nor are there clear OBD-II GM enhanced parameters to quickly pinpoint when bad E-10 has caused ill effects to the powertrain and making the owners assume GM has bad product design and are not happy with the car’s performance.
It is one thing to market E-10 as being greener but a car like a Corvette with 400-650 HP stuck using 91 octane E-10 does not function well on the street that a 200 HP car does but worse when using that Corvette in grass roots racing.
GM needs to finally see this issue, promote ways for others to see this problem and how to correct it as many service shops including dealers are assuming it is a bad fuel pump needing replacement when it is not the problem
2nd issue with GREEN gas is the fumes it produces in the fuel tank which attacks the electronic card in tank causing the fuel gauge to report incorrectly or even state the tank is empty when it is far from it.
Gereon (Germany)
Why couldn’t I read this amazing story on the GM-Website?
http://www.theautochannel.com/news/2008/10/22/190535.html
Michael J
First off, congratulations on even competing in the ALMS series at all. It is truly an entertaining and worthwhile racing series, unlike NASCAR. I’m even more excited that Corvette Racing will be moving to GT2 next year to battle with Porsche and Ferrari (especially in something that actually resembles the car that I could buy at the dealer, unlike those NASCAR boxes).
Also, I think that experimenting with “greener” technologies makes the racing truly special. Keep up the good work at Corvette Racing. I look forward to seeing the new GT2 Corvette cars at MidOhio next year.