Green Motorsports: The Indy 500 Greens Up Its Act

Marketing Renewable and Sustainable Energy At 200 MPH

Environmental car racing: an oxymoron? Not so much as you would think, expressly with technology waffly fast. At the 2023 Indianapolis 500 on May 28 in Indianapolis, Indiana, all 33 cars will be running on Shell 100-percent renewable biofuel, using stat neutral motor oil, and rolling on Firestone Firehawk tires made with recycled plastics. Many of the team transporters will moreover be using biofuels. Whence in 2024 the cars will be powered by hybrid engines.

The greening of IndyCar extends off the track, too, by the way of sponsorship. One such visitor is Capstone Untried Energy, which is valuables the No. 29 car driven by Devlin DeFrancesco, entered by Andretti Steinbrenner Autosport. Capstone provides sustainable energy alternatives with microturbines, EV charging, solar, shower energy storage and generators for prime and standby power.

In its fifth year of IndyCar sponsorship, Capstone provides energy to clients with commercial buildings, hospitals, hotels, colleges, prisons, military bases, multifamily buildings and wastewater treatment plants. IndyCar sponsorship allows the visitor to connect its wide energy technologies with the wide technologies in racing, educating potential customers how they can produce clean, reliable energy for everyday use, peak and stand-by emergency power.

At the heart of the Capstone process are microturbines that shrivel liquid or compressed natural gas, a hydrogen tousle with natural gas or 100% hydrogen, all of which can be produced from renewable sources. Renewable natural gas made from organic waste is not a fossil fuel and does not involve drilling, making it appealing. It fits perfectly with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 as it addresses climate warming.

Microturbines run quiet and are portable, which is a strong selling point to potential customers, one they proved to the IndyCar polity at the Texas Motor Speedway in April. A microturbine and fuel tank were mounted on a trailer and towed to the speedway overdue a pickup truck. Once at the track, it provided all the power for the Andretti Autosport hospitality recipe and was used to tuition electric cars.

A conventional gasoline or diesel generator would be too loud and produce unpleasant exhaust, making vendee entertaining difficult, if not impossible. It was a powerful sit-in to the IndyCar polity and the Texas Motor Speedway management how a portable microturbine can produce wipe and reliable electricity during an event, and be ready if there was a power outage.

Clean Fleet Report had the opportunity, at the 2023 Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, to sit lanugo with Jim Crouse, the president and CEO of Capstone Engineered Solutions. We discussed the company’s technology and how it leverages the IndyCar series sponsorship.

Interview

Clean Fleet Report: Clean Fleet Report’s readers come to us for information on electrified vehicles, expressly those with a plug. Let’s talk well-nigh what you did at the Texas IndyCar race in April.

Capstone: The portable microturbine unit we had for Andretti was 65 kilowatts (kW), with the Andretti hospitality zone using well-nigh 30 kW to imbricate all their activities, including air conditioning. That left us with power to run an EV charger. It worked unconfined all race weekend.

CFR: Could the portable charger be an using for EV charging at malls, farms, merchantry parks and other locations? If so, how long can a tank of fuel last with moderate-to-heavy use?

Capstone: Let’s use the Texas IndyCar race as an example. The CNG (compressed natural gas) storage held well-nigh 80,000 cubic feet of renewable natural gas. That would have run that microturbine for six days, non-stop, making it an efficient and reliable power source. It is forfeit competitive to use our microturbine, expressly when considering the labor forfeit and permit process to connect car chargers to the utility.

CFR: It sounds like you have a compelling story to tell, so how does sponsorship come into play in getting out the word?

Capstone: Our participation focuses on four aspects, whence with branding, where we are the primary sponsor on the car. We get television coverage and at the track exposure to Capstone Untried Energy. As a newer visitor this helps with trademark recognition.

We then have the digital speciality with social media including LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and our own website, where we create content to market our technology.

Customer engagement vivification is important by bringing potential customers to the track, but moreover inviting existing customers to the track. The weightier way to sell to a new consumer is having an existing consumer tell them how unconfined the product is, and how we are to work with as we supply them with this technology. It is like any new endeavor, where we were four years ago to today is night-and-day.

We will have between five and 25 customers at any IndyCar race, but not for one day only. We invite them for all three days of practice, qualifying and racing, to spend quality time virtually the dinner and breakfast table to develop relationships. We firmly believe in long-term relationships with all of our customers.

The final aspects of our sponsorship are the B2B opportunities within the racing community. So, here at Andretti Autosport, DHL (sponsor on the No. 28 car driven by Romain Grosjean) is a consumer of Capstone. We have had many introductions and met new customers that we weren’t seeking out, but are part of the racing community.

Many of the people that come to an IndyCar race are visualization makers, or at least influencers within their own organization, so the opportunity to sit virtually with them in the hospitality zone for a drink or meal is important. What is funny is how the other team sponsors bring their customers to the event and often times they are people that can use our technology and services.

CFR: Other than the wipe power source, what else do you sell on?

Capstone: One of the biggest competitors we have is the status quo: no one gets fired for ownership electricity from their local utility. So we let them know there is a less expensive and cleaner option. Since power generation is our only and cadre business, it makes us variegated from companies that moreover make bulldozers and tractors or diesel engines for trucks and cars and generators. We are variegated from them.

CFR: The upside looks strong.

Capstone: Capstone is a new technology that is largest at meeting the air emission regulations, so the market is coming to us and we have increasingly tailwinds than headwinds. It is a unconfined time in the energy space as the lack of grid infrastructure, with the move to electrification, is creating a lot of opportunity as planning and infrastructure minutiae is trying to catch-up. And it isn’t just in the EV charging space as we are speaking with warehouse and manufacturing companies that can’t get unbearable grid power from their local utility.

Wrapping-up: The Capstone IndyCar Sponsorship

Motorsports sponsorships can be an spanking-new venue for the advertising, marketing and promotion of a brand, product or service. Capstone Untried Energy is doing it right as they are not relying on the name on the side of a car to get the word out. Its guests at the 2023 Indianapolis 500 will receive:

• Race Weekend Credentials that provide gate, garage, paddock and pit lane access
• Andretti Hospitality Suite wangle to relax and socialize while enjoying catering and beverages
• Driver Meet & Greet with the No. 29 suburbanite Devlin DeFrancesco
• Garage Tour for an up-close view the car preparation and to meet hairdo members

Leveraging the sponsorship at the track, utilizing social media, and pre- and post-race personal contact with customers is what will provide a good return on the sponsorship.

From the team standpoint, Julia Steinbrenner, co-owner of Steinbrenner Racing, told us that it’s unconfined having a partner like Capstone “bringing untried energy to the forefront in the automotive realm, and having them do what they did at the Texas Motor Speedway to not only make Andretti Autosport stat neutral, but the series too.” She went on to say it was “encouraging the partnership ideology tabulation is there to work from, where other team sponsors can meet and work together, making each visitor increasingly successful.”

The 107th running of the 2023 Indianapolis 500 is scheduled for Sunday, May 30. It is stuff televised on NBC and Universo whence at 11 a.m. EDT. Peacock begins streaming at 9 a.m. EDT. SiriusXM waterworks 160 begins its unconcentrated at 11 a.m. EDT.

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Story by John Faulkner. Photos courtesy of Capstone Untried Energy.