NASCAR: Wasted Fuel Myth by Environmental Wackos

When it comes to gasoline conservationists and environmental screamers or wackos on auto racing, it's clear we have our hypocrites in our midst. Loud ones that is! This is all related to Greg Gunderson's recent "win" in getting closer to driving in a NASCAR race.

Let us examine this myth that has been going around over the internet for quite some time on how NASCAR or any other racing event is seen as “wasteful” on the amount of fuel consumed when compared to the overall amount of fuels consumed in a single day in the United States.

Let’s start with an airplane flight.

A flight from Washington DC to L.A. (2700 miles one way, or roundtrip for 5400 miles) in a 737 airplane will burn about 800 gallons of jet fuel per hour. Traveling at an average airspeed of 400 mph, it would take almost 7 hours to fly from D.C. to L.A, California. In 7 hours the plane would have burned about 5600 gallons of jet fuel in a one way trip.

Remember that. Airplane. 5600 gallons used. Flight from D.C. to L.A. One way.

Now, let’s take a look at fuels burned during a single NASCAR racing event.

According to figures obtained in my research on the consumption rate during a single NASCAR racing event, the average consumption of a race car is about 2 miles per gallon in a 250 mile race. 125 gallons of fuel would be required per car in a NASCAR race. Usually there would be up to 40 cars in one race (even though many cars do drop out because of wrecks or auto malfunctions). That would be an equivalent of 5,000 gallons of fuel consumed per race! That’s the nearly the same amount of fuel consumed for a 737 airplane in a one way trip from D.C. to L.A.

Let’s put all of this into a proper perspective here on what constitutes as “wasting” gasoline.

The amount of gasoline America consumes each day is 320,500,000 GALLONS PER DAY!!! (March 2005). That’s 320 million gallons! Or 3700 gallons per second! Incredible!

In one NASCAR racing event, it uses only .00015% (or .0000015) of the total fuels consumed in the United States in a single day. That’s like if your car gets 300 miles out of a single tank full of gasoline (say 20 gallons) you would only need to drive 2 feet to get the same percentage amount of gasoline “wasted” in a single day of NASCAR racing. Or if want to imagine the amount of gasoline used from a 20 gallon gas tank then multiply 20 gallons by .0000015 and you get .0003 gallon of gasoline used to drive only 2 feet. That’s barely over 1 milliliter of gasoline used out of 20 gallons. How much is a milliliter of gasoline? Much less than ½ of a teaspoon but greater than 1/8 of teaspoon. You can see how much 1/8 teaspoon is in the picture above. We’re talking about a few drops here. Not very much. And environmental wackos are screaming over this?

Even if you added fuels used to transport the race cars, the crew team and spectators traveling to and from a NASCAR racing event (or any other racing event) the amount of gasoline consumed would not even make a difference in terms of fuels “wasted” in a single day. If anything is wasteful, it is flying to a convention when people could use a live video-conference meeting instead to discuss issues electronically.

So, the next time when you hear people scream and moan about how “wasteful” these racing events are, remind the person about the 1/8th teaspoon message. Using the excuse for not supporting NASCAR or any racing event because they “waste” fuel is at best quite disingenuous. Or perhaps they are very ill-informed.

If there is one thing I hate, it is when people scream needlessly with their misinformation and myth over something very, very, very, very……..very small.

Just as well, many of these racing events do not even use conventional gasoline fuels like we use.

By the way, congratulations to Greg Gunderson on placing 3rd out of 49 other hearing drivers for a chance to be on the 12 person racing reality show, Racin’ for a Livin’. Let’s hope he gets on the reality show for his chance that he has the right NASCAR stuff. The deaf community should be so proud of his accomplishment so far.