Indy Racing League shifting to ethanol.
Gasoline Alley at the Indianapolis 500 will soon be called Ethanol Alley. The Indy Racing League announced Wednesday that it is switching from Methanol to a new mixture relying on cornerived ethanol.
It's a small market for the ethanol, involving 160,000 gallons out of a 3.5 billion produced each year. But it's a big symbolic gesture meant to counter perceptions that ethanol doesn't perform well as gasoline or other fuels.
The corn and ethanol industries have influential supporters who pushed to get the grain alcohol into race cars.
In the IRL, ethanol will replace methanol, a natural gas-made fuel that replaced gasoline on the circuit in the 1970's because it was less likely to ignite. Ethanol, too, is less combustible than gasoline.
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