Barwell Motorsport

Barwell Motorsport is the first team to convert a high performance sports car to compete on bioethanol E85 blend.  This year, they will be fielding one very ‘Green’ Aston Martin – with Paul Drayson’s DBRS9 converted to run on bioethanol fuel.  After a successful partnership in 2006, Paul and Mark Lemmer of Barwell made a joint decision to explore the possibilities of running Paul’s car on a renewable energy source fuel.  In collaboration with Aston Martin Racing, the car has now been fully developed to run in the 2007 Avon Tyres British GT Championship on E85 (a blend of 85% bioethanol and 15% petrol).  Barwell Motorsport and Paul have a joint desire for success, and together they are now ready to show that this can be achieved with a car running on a renewable energy source fuel.

This is a first for both Aston Martin and the British GT Championship.  As part of the bioethanol Aston project, Paul is very interested in motorsport innovation, including developments in ‘green’ technologies such as renewable fuels.  He is completely funding this project, which has also required substantial investment by him into the development of a new fuel tank and fuel system, due to the different properties of the bioethanol fuel.  This has been less technically difficult than expected and has been achieved by increasing fuel-injector, fuel line and fuel pump delivery capacity.

So far, the bioethanol car is proving to be extremely completive taking pole position in the first round of the Championship and coming second in the second round, both at Oulton Park on 7-9 April 2007.  Rounds three and four at Donington Park on 21-22 April 2007 saw another strong performance with a fourth and second on the grid and third place in the third round.  In the fifth round at Snetterton on 3 June 2007, they started in pole position and achieved a historic first Championship win for a bioethanol car in the UK.

The success of the bioethanol Aston Martin DBRS9 has led a number of other teams and various parties to question whether this car has a performance advantage over its petrol-fuelled equivalents.  This issue has been addressed by Barwell in their press release of 23 July 2007.

For more information on Barwell Motorsport, visit their website at www.barwellmotorsport.co.uk.

To see the case study on Barwell Motorsport click here.