Prodrive develops sustainable racing fuel

UK-based motorsport and advanced engineering company Prodrive has developed a sustainable fuel for racing. 

Called Prodrive ECOpower, it has been developed over the past eight months with Coryton Advanced Fuels, a bespoke fuel supplier based in Essex.

The main components of the fuel are produced from second-generation biofuel (manufactured from agricultural waste) and e-fuels created by capturing carbon from the atmosphere. These allow ECOpower to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% compared with “equivalent petrol”.

Developed at Prodrive’s Banbury headquarters in Oxfordshire, the fuel can be “used as a direct replacement for unleaded petrol in almost any vehicle”. The firm has already run its new Hunter T1+ racer (an evolution of the Hunter T1 that finished fifth overall at this year’s Dakar rally) on the fuel without any modifications to the existing petrol engine. The company also intends to run a “near-identical” fuel in road vehicles to prove the technology further.

Prodrive chairman David Richards said: “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 will initially be used at the World Cup for Cross Country Rallies later this year, seeing action across the five-day events, which can cover over 745 miles each. It will then be used by the Prodrive-backed Bahrain Raid Extreme team at the Dakar Rally in January.