Brian France: “We’re doing everything we can looking at alternative fuel options”
Jul 03, 2007
Brian France: Finally, I want to spend a moment on alternative fuels and really what we think going green, being environmentally sensitive, we know they go together on that. Through Sonoco, we’ll be stepping up our efforts, making sure we’re doing everything we can looking at alternative fuel options. That may be way down the road. It may be partial progress. We’re really going to school very, very diligently here trying to sort that out.
An interview with: BRIAN FRANCE
Brian France: Finally, I want to spend a moment on alternative fuels and really what we think going green, being environmentally sensitive, we know they go together on that. Through Sonoco, we’ll be stepping up our efforts, making sure we’re doing everything we can looking at alternative fuel options. That may be way down the road. It may be partial progress. We’re really going to school very, very diligently here trying to sort that out.
Whatever we would do would really only have more of a symbolic movement in terms of a benefit. However, that’s important. It’s important for NASCAR to lead in some areas - this being one of them - when it comes to the environment, when it comes to our dependency on foreign oil. It’s important for us to stay in a leadership position, and that’s what we’re going to do.
Mike Helton and I were up visiting some people in Detroit recently. We’re taking an accelerated view of how we’ll be looking at that.
With that, I’m happy to open it up to any questions.
HERB BRANHAM: We’ll take questions for NASCAR chairman and CEO Brian France.
Q. The first steps towards alt fuels being pushed by the manufacturers because the marketplace is going that way or is this about reclaiming some of the image benefit the IRL sports cars have had from ethanol and other green-type fuels?
BRIAN FRANCE: Well, the manufacturers definitely have weighed in, and they have their own strategies going on. They’re changing around as well. It’s an evolving strategy.
I think it’s just becoming clear to us that fuel prices, a barrel of oil, unfortunately they don’t seem to be coming down to levels they were three or four years ago. Then you have a compounded issue with more data than ever that’s coming in on global warming, some of the effects that carbon – carbon being one, all kinds of things swirling around now that we need to have a handle or.
We are. That’s where we have a research and development center. We’re now well-equipped to manage these issues differently than we could have managed them in a review capacity four or five years ago. It’s important for us to be in step and lead when we can. That’s what we’re going to do.
Q. Any realistic timetable when you can get something like that implemented?
BRIAN FRANCE: No, because we don’t know which direction we’ll ultimately land. There’s eight or nine different versions of what alternative fuels mean to people. The marketplace hasn’t determined just which one they’re going to support most, and maybe several.
But it’s going to be different than it is today. Whatever we’ll do will be done with Sonoco, in step with them. They’re our fuel partner. They have every incentive from us. Maybe adjustments to what we do now, maybe something more than that. We just don’t know.
What I’m telling you today is we’re going to be in a pretty high gear at looking down the road at making sure we’re in step with the rest of the country and other industries from little things to big things, even though whatever we might to, frankly, we can’t move a needle or we would have done something yesterday. We can only do things that would symbolically demonstrate we’re in step, and those are the things we’ll be looking at.
HERB BRANHAM: Thanks so much to our chairman and CEO, Brian France. We appreciate you taking the time out to join us today. As you could tell, there was a big audience today, a lot of interest in your participation, so thank you.
BRIAN FRANCE: Thank you.
HERB BRANHAM: Thank you so much to all the media in attendance. I believe this is our largest audience of the year for a teleconference. As always, we greatly appreciate the coverage. For those of you coming to the Pepsi 400, look forward to seeing you this weekend. Thank you.
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