While this year's 24 Hours of Le Mans ended up being a bit of a disappointment from a purely competitive standpoint thanks to the early retirement of the +TOYOTA s and the cancellation of the Peugeot race program earlier this year, it was not a total waste.
In fact it was quite a strong demonstration of the message that American Le Mans Series CEO Scott Atherton has been spreading since at least 2008. Ever since the launch of the ALMS Green Challenge that year, Atherton has been playing up the relevance of Le Mans-style sports car racing to manufacturers of road cars.
For five years +Audi International and later +Peugeot have been demonstrating the ability of diesel engines to provide before performance and fuel efficiency. Here in the US, a plurality of the competitors run on cellulosic E85 and the Dyson Racing team has been running biobutanol for two years.
This weekend in France, Audi and Toyota both demonstrated the performance and efficiency of hybrid power while +Highcroft Racing and the +Nissan DeltaWing showed the possibilities of light weight, low drag and downsized engines, all of which will factor into new cars in the coming years. Next year we will see the first hydrogen fuel cell car run at Le Mans.
What advancements have we ever seen from NASCAR? If we are going to race cars, the Le Mans approach is definitely the way to go.
#Lemans #fuelefficiency #americanlemansseries #alms
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