American Le Mans Series Partners With Nature Conservancy

If you think politics makes strange bedfellows, you should hang out around more racetracks. People that were at each other's throats last weekend are now all buddy-buddy and announcing new partnerships. Not that they were ever "at each others throats", but the American Le Mans Series has just announced that they will be working with the Nature Conservancy to protect acres in California.

Overall, this seems like good move, especially on the ALMS's part. Motorheads have a bad tendency to be highly intransigent on environmental issues, largely treating them as bunk and something to be avoided at all costs. But to paraphrase Dave Despain, environmental issues are coming, and if we meet them head on, and deal with them, we will have more of a voice in shaping how these issues will effect us as gearheads. If we do not do this, then our decisions will be made for us.

Seems pretty clear to me, but it's always been a bit stupefying how the default response to something like this has been to stick ones head in the sand and pretend this just isn't happening. Not only is that an infantile response, but it won't work or solve anything.

To ALMS, and its very sharp and proactive leader, Scott Atherton, have been in the vanguard of taking on environmental issues. Not only have they welcomed alt-fuels with open arms (diesel Audis and Peugeots, ethanol fueled Corvettes etc), but they also have a hybrid racer that just made it to the podium on its first outing, the Corsa Motorsports Ginetta-Zytek.

Despite the best efforts of Max Mosley and the FIA to make Formula 1 more and more environmentally relevant, the ALMS, and sportscar racing in general have a distinct advantage over a GP car, no matter how wondrous those beasts are: packaging.

If you've ever seen a modern GP up close, or for that matter, any open wheel car, it quickly becomes apparent that space is at a real premium. Shoot, in a GP car, there's barely enough room for the driver. Not so in a modern sports racer or sports prototype.

For starters, they're nominally two-seaters, so there's lots of room just off the driver's shoulder for ECU units or battery packs or all sorts of stuff. On top of that, they've got that all-enveloping bodywork, so there's more space under there where various bits and bobs can be stashed away.

So Atherton is making sure that the ALMS is doing just that. And in addition to more prosaic engineering concerns, he's also working with people like the Nature Conservancy.

The deal is that the ALMS will support the Nature Conservancy's 'Adopt an Acre' program starting in July. The goal is to end up protecting 500 acres in the Las Californias region through the "acquisition, restoration and reforestation along the Californian coastline." Not only will this partnership lead to ecosystem protection, it might also get us a better bottle of wine too.

Part of the plan is for "the development of ground-breaking and environmentally sound vineyard designs that will allow native plants and animals to flourish." OK, sign me up for that end of things too!

So not only do we help the planet, we still get to go racing and we get a glass or two at the end of the day. Now who in their right mind is going to oppose that?

Source: AutoBlogGreen photo from Flickr users joiseyshowaa and tinou bao