Tiff Needell's column

Given that the experts’ latest verdict is that climate mood swings mean we’re not actually going to get any global warming for the next 10 years – but if we don’t act now, boy we’ll be in big trouble afterwards – the CO2 crusade is taking on an almost religious stance. Be good today and you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife... maybe!

Yet wherever you go nowadays, there’s simply no escaping it. Whether you’re trying to reduce your carbon footprint, search for new energy sources or simply save yourself a few pence, you just have to be seen to be going green. Having said that, I thought being asked to participate in a ‘green’ drag race was taking things a bit far considering the amount of fuel drag racers guzzle every quarter-of-a-mile!

In a bid to show they have a conscience, the owners of Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire ran an ‘Alternative Energy Racing’ event. And I got shoehorned into filming it for Fifth Gear, entered in an experimental Tri-fuel Lotus Exige.

Now, while the CO2 debate rumbles on, alternative fuels are something that I really am interested in. Because one thing we can be 100 per cent sure of is that one day the natural oil will run out, and petrolheads like me will need to fuel our addiction to speed somehow. You never know, we might even find a cheaper way of doing it.

This latest Lotus takes the alternative fuel debate one step further as it moves away from bio products and heads straight back into the science lab. We’ve already seen the Exige 265E with its ability to run on either petrol or E85 bioethanol. Well, the Tri-fuel 270E goes one step – and 5bhp – further as it can also run on methanol.

Drag racers and Indycar stars have been using this fuel for about half-a-century. Not only is it less flammable than petrol, but if a fire starts, it can be doused in water – although as you can’t see any flames, you don’t know what’s ablaze.

Methanol is mainly produced as a by-product of natural gas, yet now NASA scientists among others are fine-tuning systems which make the stuff by taking hydrogen created from water and mixing it with CO2 sucked out of the atmosphere. Hey presto, the planet is saved!

The trouble is, it’s not very efficient. So while it gives more power, you get through a lot more of the stuff – not that I was worried, as all I needed was enough for a quarter-of-a-mile.

The event itself did its best to imitate Wacky Races, as everything from an electric scooter to a couple of 1,000bhp racing trucks turned up. The scooter flashed across the line at 63mph just over 20 seconds after sparking off, while the fastest truck was six seconds quicker. Yet right on its tail was a milk float!

Well, it looked like a VW Beetle, but it was a milk float underneath. This was the creation of electrical engineers and brothers Sam and Olly Young, who had bonded the two vehicles together to produce something that could spin its wheels and travel the first 60 feet as quickly as a superbike.

Fastest on the day was a bike: 10.9 seconds and nearly 130mph from a Triumph Daytona 675 running on apples! Yes, bike journalist Rupert Paul had got some A-level students to produce a gallon of bioethanol from apples – although they needed 2,500 of them.

Biofuels were unsurprisingly the most popular power sources, with a couple of vegetable oils and the inevitable chip fat special thrown in. But among the road-legal cars, I showed the way in my methanol Lotus: 12.9127 seconds and 107.68mph were my vital stats. I’m off to the Sexy Green Car Show in Cornwall for a lap of honour – and a whole new career in motorsport beckons...