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FEV supports Bonk Motorsport with renewable ‘eFuel Racing 98’ at the Nürburgring 24-hours race
Bonk Motorsport will use renewable fuel from FEV, demonstrating their commitment to sustainability, as their BMW M4 GT4 competes in the acclaimed alternative fuels class at the Nürburgring 24-hours race.
“We are thrilled to partner with team Bonk Motorsport, which has already repeatedly proven its excellent reputation in the racing scene with numerous titles in the touring car and GT sector,” said Dr. Johannes Scharf, Chairman of the Executive Board, FEV Europe. “For us, the team is also the perfect partner in the area of sustainability thanks to its endeavors to achieve the best results. After all, end consumers always benefit from the knowledge gained in motorsport when it is transferred to series production vehicles.”
“With FEV, we have gained a strong partner who, as a technological innovation leader, meets our extreme demands in motorsport and demonstrates a high level of expertise in the field of renewable fuels. This helps us to give racing and mobility as a whole a future through sustainable acting,” said Michael Bonk, Managing Director of Bonk Motorsport.
The renewable ‘eFuel Racing 98’ supplied by FEV is produced by DeCarTrans, a consortium coordinated by FEV which is being funded by the German Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure (BMDV). It is the largest project ever funded by the BMDV. The constantly growing consortium currently comprises 15 partners from research, the process engineering and mineral oil industries as well as renowned OEMs. Their goal is to further develop an innovative process to produce synthetic gasoline from methanol, which is produced from biogenic or regenerative sources.
In May, the M4 GT4 of renowned BMW customer sports team Bonk Motorsport completed its first tests using renewable ‘eFuel Racing 98’ on team partner Bertrandt’s test bench. The test runs were carried out in direct comparison with conventional fuel. The initial results showed that the use of renewable fuels is reliably possible even without technical modifications to the vehicle and that the performance data is comparable to that of conventional fuel.
During the production of renewable fuels, the same amount of CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere as the vehicle emits during operation. Hence, racing the Bonk-BMW in the Nürburgring 24-hours race is completely carbon-neutral from a well-to-wheel perspective.
In addition, the analyses showed that the number and mass of particles emitted could be reduced by around half compared to conventional fuel. During the production of renewable fuels, the same amount of CO2 is extracted from the atmosphere as the vehicle emits during operation. Hence, racing the Bonk-BMW on the notorious Nürburgring-Nordschleife in the 24-hours race is completely CO2-neutral from a well-to-wheel perspective.
“We are not surprised by the latest results. They confirm the fact that renewable fuels and future e-fuels are an important enabler to achieve the climate targets by 2035,” said Dr. Raul Tharmakulasingam, Project Manager Gasoline Powertrains at FEV and project manager of DeCarTrans.
By using renewable fuels, the existing fleet of vehicles with combustion engines can be operated in a directly climate-neutral manner and the transition of mobility can be accelerated, “at the same time as the expansion of electromobility and in parallel with the various important hydrogen applications,” said Tharmakulasingam.
The use of ‘eFuel Racing 98’ from FEV and DeCarTrans under race conditions in the 550 hp Bonk Motorsport BMW M4 GT4 can be experienced during the Nürburgring 24-hours race on June 1 - 2, 2024. Drivers will be Nordschleife experts Michael Schrey, Jörg Weidinger and Martin Kroll.
www.fev.com
