The greening of motorsport

AS Formula 1 (F1), motorsport’s flagship event, lurches from crisis to crisis, perceptions are growing that a business once viewed as a wellspring of road-car technology is increasingly irrelevant to the wider automotive industry. In recent years, however, a new breed of racing competitions has emerged that could, according to the idealistic entrepreneurs driving them, point the way for a more relevant motorsport industry — one that stimulates the development of low-emissions technology, reinvigorates the flow of ideas from race to road and, critically, delivers sufficient thrills and spills to keep the fans interested.

Spectators at last year’s Isle of Man TT received a glimpse of this new vanguard of motorsport when the electric bikes of the TTxGP — the world’s first zero-emission motorcycle race — took their turn on the track. A year on, as organiser Azhar Hussain prepares to launch a production version of the winning electric bike, it is hard to disagree with his assertion that green racing can have immediate benefits for consumers. Meanwhile, the Dutch entrepreneurs behind the Formula Zero hydrogen-fuel-cell racing competition harbour bold ambitions that a race currently featuring fuel-cell-powered Go-Karts will evolve in just a few years to a full-scale Formula racing competition.