Friends of the Earth come up with some numbers on that “green” Honda racing car I was mentioning earlier in the week…
“Button and his team-mate Rubens Barrichello will race Honda’s new RA107 and send about 500kg of CO2 into the atmosphere on each of the 17 grand prix weekends, and about 17 tonnes by the end of the 2007 season. The cars emit around 1,500g of carbon dioxide per kilometre, which is almost nine times more than the amount of the average new road vehicle.
The F1 season also requires Button and Barrichello to fly around 98,752 miles between their Monaco bases and the race circuits, producing a further 28.638 tonnes of CO2. In total, each driver will generate around 54.383 tonnes of the gas a year.
The figures exclude the flights made to test destinations and promotional events, the scooters used to get around circuits and the scores of team staff and hundreds of tonnes of equipment they transport around the world.”
Remarkably, Honda say they’ve yet to finish their calculations on just how much CO2 will be emitted by their operation. I daresay there are quite a lot of numbers to add up, but you can’t help hoping this crass stunt backfires, if you’ll pardon the pun.
