Wanted: Climate Scientists Who Can Save the Future of Racing

From Road & Track

Chances are that you've already heard the news: the EPA is discussing a new rule applying criminal penalties for anybody who removes or defeats certain emissions controls on various off-road-focused vehicles. A further clarification by the EPA today reminded everybody that it's already illegal to tamper with the emissions controls on street cars, even if that street car is being taken off the road for competition. The good news is that there's no enforcement language in the bill, and there's no indication that existing violations of the Clean Air Act-the entire Spec Miata field, for example-will be prosecuted with any more vigor than is currently the case.

The bad news is that auto racing is unlikely to escape the EPA's heavy hand forever. We're "low-hanging fruit," a relatively small and powerless group of people who don't have the lobbying or political power of the coal industry or the shipping industry or any of the other major polluters in America. If the EPA is given the choice between going toe-to-toe with coal-state Senators or cracking down on a bunch of people racing 25-year-old Civics on the weekend . . . well, I think those senators will be able to sleep soundly at night.

Not that it's impossible to go racing in an emissions-compliant car. As a competitor in NASA's Performance Touring class, a kind of catch-all designed for everything from old MGBs to brand-new BMWs, I've lined up against plenty of cars with entirely stock powertrains. There's nothing to say that you can't turn a brilliant laptime and meet EPA regulations at the same time.

That doesn't mean that affordable racing wouldn't suffer were the EPA to enforce what amounts to a sealed engine/intake/exhaust policy. To begin with, engine swaps would be a thing of the past. We'd also find ourselves dealing with parts and sourcing issues. I race a '95 Neon; I don't think I could assemble an emissions-compliant system on that car if somebody put a gun to my head. The parts are all long out of production, meaning that I'd be forced to scrounge through sunny-state junkyards. And that's for a car that sold over a million copies just 20 years ago. What about the people racing Triumphs and Lister-Jags and the like?

Let's not even get into the cost of repairing cars with OEM components, or the fragility of plastic intakes and complex exhaust systems under racing conditions. And I don't want to think about the cost of compliance. Would every NASA and SCCA club race start with a five-hundred-car "E-check"? So while it's not impossible to go racing without violating emissions standards, it's far from pleasant, or cheap, or easy.

The truth is that many of us in the racing world are passionate about the environment, whether it's in the "clean water for kids in Flint" sense or the "stopping climate change" sense. We go through a lot of trouble to recycle fluids, keep oil out of the watershed, and dispose of damaged parts properly. The stereotype of the denim-jacket-wearing circle-track racer pouring brake fluid onto the ground next to an elementary-school playground might have had some basis in reality 50 years ago, but today the average NASA-license holder is serious about his responsibility to the planet and its people.

Yet we continue to burn race gas and run headers and deceive our ECUs. Why? Is it because we're hypocrites? Or is it because we understand that motorsport of all kinds amounts to a mere tear in a salted sea? How many years would I have to race a Plymouth Neon with no catalytic converter before I matched a single one of Al Gore or Michael Moore's cross-country private-jet flights? What damage does the entire SCCA race season do to Mother Earth compared to, say, the nickel or cobalt mining processes that make a Prius possible?

We know, in our bones, that racing doesn't do much environmental harm. We also know that most racers are conscientious people who often work on behalf of the planet in other ways. What we need is hard data that shows this. We need somebody with the proper credentials to run the tests and do the math and show the world what the impact is of Improved Touring racing compared to iPhone production. We also need a way to show that we're doing our part in other ways, from turning down our thermostats to buying products made with recycled materials.

Once we're in possession of that data, then we can make our case to the powers that be. It might not be enough to save us-being innocent didn't save the victims of Tomas de Torquemada- but it's where we need to start if we have any hope of fighting the battle. We can't rely on the goodwill of the EPA. Nor can we rely on the goodwill of an American citizenry that is increasingly abandoning the barbaric yawp of 200-mph (okay, 130 mph in a Neon, even with my 2.4-liter minivan-motor special) full-throttle thrills in favor of obsessively poking at a tiny screen that beeps and boops back at them.

This column, therefore, is a plea to the men and women of science out there, the climatologists, the mathematical modelers, the futurists. We need your help, particularly if you're one of us. Show us what racing does to the planet, and put it in context that everybody can understand. If there's no defense for it-if racing truly does damage the Earth as much as lithium-ion battery production or private-jet flights for the elite-then we'll have to change our ways and act appropriately. But if we are not a threat, if we are simply a small source of pollution and we're busy planting trees and recycling on the off weekends to make up the difference, then we need to know that, too.

After all, we can't go racing if there's no way to preserve life on Earth, can we?