By Rob Einaudi
Editor-in-Chief
The Grassroots Motorsports Ultimate Track Car Challenge is fast approaching. In addition to the varsity and JV classes, this year we thought it would be fun to add a "green track car" class. Yeah, I know, kind of a crazy idea. Anyway, we had a lot of interest at first, but when push comes to shove, it's been hard to get anyone to commit, let alone find any fast green cars. Tesla was very interested at first, but now they seem to be nervous about the ability of their car to make it around Buttonwillow without blowing up. I talked to Johnathan Goodwin about it, and he was looking into building an electric Ford GT for the event, but then got distracted by some other high-profile projects he had to finish up (more on those soon). The Greasecar guys were also interested, but most of their stuff is on the East Coast, and they didn't think they could make it out West. Same goes for ProEV.
There is also the question of what the hell is a green track car? Is there even such a thing? Many people seem to think that E85 isn't all that green. But we will probably have an E85 car or two (I hope). We should also have some diesel VWs like the Chili Pepper Racing Jetta below. And John Fabijanic from Cal Poly will be there to help us determine just how green the cars are (and he'll be bringing his insane 1000 hp Ford Explorer).
But we need more green cars, so we're asking you to help us out. If you know of any fast green track cars, tell them about this event! How about a quick hyrbid or an speedy electric car? There have to be some cars like this out there. We already have a ton of varsity and JV level cars in our GRM UTCC rating category. But the race is on June 8, so time is running out. Read all about it!