IndyCar’s Role in Motorsport Green Future

IndyCar Championship

Every category in motorsports is known not to be the most environmentally friendly sport, primarily due to its high usage of fossil fuels, significant carbon emissions from cars and the logistics, and the environmental impact of building and maintaining racetracks. All of this creates a substantial carbon footprint, harming the planet in unimaginable ways. In response to that, a lot of categories have started a new initiative and journey to reverse that: Racing Toward Zero, and IndyCar is one of the sports to join this campaign.

Racing Toward Zero involves a series of targets to decrease the category’s carbon footprint and harm to the environment, and Indy aims to become the most sustainable motorsport category in North America. By 2030, their targets are: reducing race operations by 50%, source 75% renewable electricity for all IndyCar events and implement recycling and composting at 100% of IndyCar events.

When it comes to the emissions topic, the main character has been Shell, the official fuel of IndyCar. In 2023, they introduced a 100% renewably sourced fuel that reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 60% in average, making the category the first one to use 100% renewable fuel. Also, all Indy’s transporters are fueled with renewable diesel for all racing events, which reduces greenhouse emissions by up to 85% compared to traditional diesel.

Talking about recycling and composting, the category will implement robust waste diversion programs in sites where they don’t exist, including actions like identifying local providers of recycling and compost for all of IndyCar’s event markets. When talking about the carbon fiber and magnesium issue, the category has introduced a recycling program for these materials, recycling and repurposing damage race cars parts and preventing additional contributions to landfill. Also, Firestone has been using its platform in Indy to demonstrate the performance of their Firehawk tires, made of an environmentally friendly substrate.

To achieve the target of sourcing 75% renewable electricity to all its events by 2030, IndyCar plans to collaborate with partners, race promoters and renewable energy suppliers to replace traditional fossil fuel infrastructure. Although this hasn’t been put into practice yet, it is the next target that the organizations are planning to make reality.

Penske Entertainment is working alongside NTT Data to track emissions, using a state-of-the-art tracking platform, streamlining the data collection effort, reducing gaps while transforming impactful data in an efficient manner. This effort would not be possible without data input from the entire sport’s ecosystem, including vendors, stakeholders, partners and fans, helping guide decisions and measure progress as we continue Racing Toward Zero.

Racing Toward Zero is a campaign that has been underway for a couple of years not only in IndyCar, but in a lot of categories like Formula 1 and SailGP. Most of the racing categories have adopted the green initiative, fighting every year and every season to make the sport environmentally friendly every year more, reducing their carbon footprint the best they can. While there’s still a very long road ahead, sustainability has become a centerpiece in the way motorsports approach and organize their overall infrastructure. IndyCar has been moving closer to reaching their goal of becoming the most sustainable motorsports category in North America. Whether it’s rethinking energy consuming, recycling waste in racing events or repurposing energy, Indy has been walking closer every year towards a greener, more sustainable future.

Written by Kauany Gouveia