With a name like Green Alternative Motorsports, you were expecting a blue car?

Cellulosic ethanol certainly has "scoot," as they say in racing. 

A LeMans prototype vehicle powered by cellulosic E85 (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) has finished second overall at the longest race in the world: the United States Air Force-sponsored 25 Hours of Thunderhill at Willows, California.

Green Alternative Motorsports (website for photos, video and blog) was formed by Stephen Zadig, VP Operations at Silicon Valley-based semiconductor company Telegent Systems, with the goal to promote E85 in both racing and consumer use as an alternative fuel to gasoline.

His team entered two vehicles into the grueling race, in which drivers—who, thankfully, swapped out periodically for rest breaks—pushed their vehicles at breakneck speeds day and night over the 25 consecutive hour-long race.

Zadig convinced Ottawa, Canada-based Iogen to supply his team with the fuel. Iogen has built and operates a demonstration scale facility to convert biomass to cellulose ethanol using enzyme technology.

Lest one be tempted to celebrate the lighter environmental impact of cellulosic ethanol in racing, the opposite was true for this proof-of-concept, anyway.

"The de-natured ethanol was transported by FedEx Critical from Ottawa and paid for by our sponsor, JSI Shipping ... clearly this element of the process totally negated any environmental benefit by a huge margin," Zadig admitted to Cleantech.com.

"That, however, was not the point, but rather to demonstrate that E-85 and specifically cellulosic E85 could compete with high performance gas powered vehicles. This was our agenda and what we demonstrated."

Interesting stats from the GAM team:

• Combined number of laps: 1160
• Combined number of miles: 3,341 (Seattle to Miami)
• Top speed: 145mph
• Number of shifts per lap: 20
• Combined total number of shifts: 12,760
• Feet of duct tape used: 75 est.
• Yards of bailing wire: 25 est.
• Average hours slept per driver: 4.5

Ethanol Producers Magazine is planning a cover with the cars, and Car and Driver Magazine also plans to do an article on the cars and fuel.