GREEN RACING UPDATE
The 2010 ALMS
Green Challenge
Final Race and
Championship
Awards
On October 3, 2010, EPA, DOE, and SAE International awarded
Green Challenge Championship trophies for the second year at
the annual American Le Mans Series (ALMS) awards ceremony in
Braselton, Georgia. The Green Challenge Championship was the
culmination of a series of nine races over the 2010 ALMS racing
season. The final race was run on October 2, 2010 at Road Atlanta.
The Green Challenge is conducted as part of a partnership between
ALMS, EPA, the Department of Energy (DOE), and SAE Interna-
tional. (See EPA Program Announcement, Green Racing Initiative for
more information.) Among those present at the race were Margo Oge,
Director of the EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality, and
Kathleen Hogan, DOE Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy
Efficiency. Margo and Kathleen had the honor of announcing the
engine start just before the race.
The final race also marked the first ever ALMS Green Expo, which
was a display of various green vehicles, products and technologies that
&EPA
United States
Environmental Protection
Agency
Office of Transportation and Air Quality
EPA-420-F-10-057
November 2010
-------
are currently available. Present at the Expo was a display by EPA and DOE
that included Green Racing and Smartway information and a Green Racing
simulator.
A Race Within a Race
For each of the races, the Green Challenge
competition was a "race within a race" where
the ALMS sports car races went on as usual,
but Green Challenge measurements and com-
putations served as an underlying competition
for the fastest and greenest competitors. This
year's competitors included diesel powered
cars using clean diesel fuel and particulate
filters, cars using E-85 ethanol fuel, and cars
using E-10 gasoline. This year there were a
record nine cars using E- 85, including cars
sponsored by Chevrolet, BMW, Porsche, and
Ferrari. For the final race, all E-85 cars used
cellulosic ethanol. An innovative Porsche
hybrid race car also ran as a demonstration.
The 2010 Winners
Two Green Challenge Championship trophies were awarded, one to each of the engine manu-
facturers of the winning Prototype and GT class cars for the season. Honda Performance Devel-
opment (HPD) won the trophy in the Prototype class, and Porsche won the GT class trophy.
The Green Challenge Championship is not a privately sponsored award and is only bestowed
by EPA, DOE, and SAE International. It is awarded at the end of the season to the two winning
engine manufacturers based on points from each race during the season.1
The Green Challenge awards are based on measurement and calculation procedures that were
developed by DOE and EPA. The season-long championship awards use a point system that
starts with a starting allocation of 205 points, and points are deducted after each race depend-
ing on the Green Challenge finish place of the car. Thus, the winners have the least number of
points at the end of the season.
1 ALMS and Michelin also sponsor separate awards for racing teams called the Michelin Green X Challenge
awards. Using the same measurement and calculation procedures as the EPA/DOE/SAE awards, ALMS and
Michelin award trophies to the winning Michelin Green X Challenge race teams for each race and at the end
of the season as a team championship. For more on the Michelin Green X Challenge, see
http://www.americanlemans.com/primary 1 .php ?cat=green
-------
HPD, the winning prototype class Green Chal'
lenge Championship manufacturer, finished
with 46 points, which was 20 points ahead of
its nearest rival, Porsche. However, Porsche was
the winning GT class manufacturer, finishing
with 53 points, which was only 7 points ahead
of Chevrolet.
The Green Challenge Championship winners'
trophies were presented at the ALMS annual
awards ceremony by Lee Slezak (DOE), Karl
Simon (EPA), and Tim Mellon (SAE International)
------- |