Biofuel will be part of the future of motoring for as long as hybrid cars are and will have a significant role to play in the present and future of motorsport. This means that biofuel and biogas tanks with carefully designed vacuum relief valves will be essential for driving the future.
In the world of motorsport, many of the biggest disciplines and championships have made a commitment to run on biofuels and other renewable fuel sources, including Formula One, which by 2026 has pledged to only use 100 per cent sustainable fuel.
The World Endurance Championship has made an even greater commitment, and in 2022 ran the 24 Hours of Le Mans with 100 per cent renewable fuels for the first time ever.
A lot of this work must be credited to the biofuel supply chain from harvest to storage, but there was also a pioneering car which proved that it could be done.
ACO LMP1 001
Rather befitting such an unusual car with such a unique claim to fame in history, the Nasamax DM139 was also by a remarkable twist of fate the very first car to be officially registered under the then-new Le Mans Prototype LMP1 regulations.
The car was initially based on a Reynard 2KQ chassis that was designed for the older specifications with customer racing teams in mind.
KW Motorsport, a company that emerged after Reynard went out of business that specialised in modifying their old cars, initially developed it for Redman Bright Racing using a more conventional Cosworth engine.
Once Team Nasamax, owned by environment entrepreneur Tony King and supported by the newspaper The Daily Telegraph, entered the picture, however, the car would be bought and extensively modified.
Because it was a converted car from a previous championship, it was the first to be homologated, and it turned out that despite using a fundamentally different fuel to the rest of the field, the Judd V10 engine did not need much modification to run on bio-ethanol.
Interestingly, the bigger issues with the development of the car involved the aerodynamics, which needed to be designed without a wind tunnel.
Six Races To Make History
As the same exact car had passed through multiple owners without much in the way of success, there were few hopes for the car outside of proving the concept that biofuel could be competitive.
The ruling body was remarkably supportive of this endeavour, allowing for a modified refuelling rig and a larger fuel tank to ensure it was not racing at a disadvantage outside of the additional weight of the fuel itself.
It generated a lot of attention, including support from New Scientist Magazine, and this was enough to call the car a success before turning a wheel.
However, it managed to catch a lot of people by surprise by finishing eighth overall at the 1000km at Monza before it took on the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
Here it made history as the first Le Mans Prototype car to complete the race with an alternative fuel, finishing 17th after managing an engine misfire unrelated to the biofuel.
Whilst it would miss the 1000km of Nürburgring, it would finish in a remarkable fifth place in Silverstone and qualified ninth at Spa-Francorchamps, although it would ultimately retire just three hours into the race following a crash involving a broken racing boot and a sharp fixing bolt.
Small Career, Huge Legacy
Ultimately, six races is not a terribly long career for a racing car, even in the technologically fast paced world of LMP. However, it managed to prove the principle that biofuel cars can be just as competitive as cars using experimental racing fuels that resembled jet fuel more than petrol.
It managed to start a conversation surrounding sustainability at a time when those questions were barely whispered in the motoring landscape.
Whilst it never had a podium finish, never qualified in pole position in its class and finished three places behind its qualifying spot in the one Le Mans race it entered, the fact it finished at all would set off a chain reaction that led to a motorsport revolution.
It was the first, last and only LMP1 car to finish using biofuel, but as the category was replaced by the Le Mans Hypercar (LMH), it would soon be agreed that all of the cars racing in endurance races would use sustainable biofuels.
Pioneers are not always celebrated in their time nor is their impact necessarily fully appreciated when they are still active, but looking back, Team Nasamax played an outsized role in changing motoring as we know it.
