Is it possible to keep racing car performance and still save the planet? Warren Pole joins touring driver Fiona Leggate at Silverstone to find out. With petrolheads fast becoming pariahs as society becomes ever greener, you could be forgiven for thinking that the internal combustion engine will soon be legislated off the planet, leaving us all humming about in dolphin-friendly, battery-powered bubble cars packing the excitement of an afternoon at the local rest home. And this is understandable. After all, oil is running out, the planet is heating up and something’s got to give. But what if you could save the planet and keep the performance? Well, you can because with a little judicious tweaking it turns out that bioethanol can make a car go like absolute stink.
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The lonely black ‘63 Falcon sits on the starting grid at the SCCA 12-Hour Trans-American race at Marlboro Park Speedway in Marlboro, Maryland. Behind the wheel is independent racer Jim Taylor. He is an experienced rally driver and has decided to run his little Falcon against the big boys in a grueling race in which almost half the field of two-driver cars will not finish. Even more unlikely is the fact that there is no truck or trailer sitting in Jim’s pit spot. Jim drove the Falcon halfway across the country from his hometown of Oklahoma City, hauling his spare parts and tools in the trunk.

This was nothing new for Jim or his iron maiden. By this time, they’d already competed in the 9th Annual 24-Hour Road Race/Rally sanctioned by the FIA de Mexico, where Jim piloted the first American car ever to complete the race. At Marlboro, Jim and codriver John Walker would finish 15th out of 36 cars, well behind winners Bob Tullius and Tony Adamowicz driving the Group 44 ‘66 Dodge Dart. Later, the Falcon would take on the Trans-Am pros at Green Valley Raceway in Texas, where it again finished 15th out of 34 cars behind John McComb’s Mustang. While the finishing order may have been less than spectacular, the fact that the Falcon never failed to finish a race is the stuff of legend.
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The competitor has traveled half-way around the world for this day. Hailing from Pesaro, a small industrial town on Italy’s Adriatic coastline, the voyage was long and tedious, crammed into uncomfortable accommodations and nary a snack for the entire duration. All of the testing has been completed, his body, mind and soul as fit as possible, weapons and skills honed – there is nothing left to do.

Ok, so only half of that stuff is true. The TM Racing MX 450 F is indeed a highly refined product from the shores of Italy, and the 31-year-old manufacturer, like any OEM, has spent countless hours testing and improving the machine. The farce is that the 450 F was somehow destined for our rendezvous in Olympia, Washington, where we met up with a benevolent TM dealer for a quick ride at Round 8 of the WORCS series.
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Following on from its history making win in the Tokachi 24-Hour Race in July, Toyota’s Supra HV-R hybrid race car has been named Race Engine of The Year 2007 by the editors of Race Engine Technology magazine.
Incorporating three electric motors – two 10kW in-wheel motors in the front plus a 150 kW rear-axle mounted electric motor – and a quick-charging capacitor system in place of the usual rechargeable batteries, the Supra HV-R can efficiently recover a energy during rapid decleration and braking from high speeds with its combination of electric engines and a 4,480cc conventional powerplant delivering 700bhp.
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