Prodrive creates sustainable fuel for motorsport

British motorsport specialists Prodrive has developed a sustainable fuel which it will use to compete in racing.

It’ll be one of the first major teams to use the fuel when it takes part in the FIA World Cup for Cross Country Rallies later this year. After this, the Prodrive-run Bahrain Raid Xtreme (BRX) team will use the fuel as it takes part in the Dakar Rally next year.

Developed over a period of eight months with UK-based Coryton Advanced Fuels, the fuel – called Prodrive ECOpower – is manufactured from agricultural waste and efuels created by capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Because of this combination, Prodrive says that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent compared with an equivalent petrol-powered car.

David Richards, Prodrive chairman, said: “I am a great advocate of motorsport taking the lead in developing, proving and promoting new technologies that can help address climate change. Covering thousands of miles across the toughest terrains, the Dakar and the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies are the perfect environment to showcase the benefits of the next generation of sustainable fuels and demonstrate that they can be used in road vehicles to reduce the use of fossil fuels, while still offering the same performance and range.”

The fuel has developed at Prodrive’s facility in Banbury and has been used in the firm’s Prodrive Hunter T1+ car utilising the same engine which previously used petrol, without modification.

Though just designed for motorsport use at the moment, Prodrive is already planning to use the fuel in a number of its road vehicles to showcase its domestic application.

Andrew Willson, Coryton CEO, said: “Coryton has a long history in blending bespoke fuels for the motorsport industry, and to further support our customers evolving needs, we’ve recently launched Sustain, our new sustainable fuels offering. We knew that partnering with Prodrive would be an ideal way to test our capability in some of the world’s most challenging racing environments, alongside some of the finest engineering expertise in the industry.”