B20 powers truck to land speed record

Record-setting driver Brent Hajek with his 2011 Ford F-250 Super Duty truck that set a speed record powered by soy biodiesel.
Jefferson City, MO. – “Just because it’s green doesn’t mean it’s slow.”
That’s the mantra of Brent Hajek, the record-setting driver of the 2011 Ford F-250 Super Duty pickup truck that sped to a new 182 miles per hour land speed record running on a 20 percent biodiesel blend at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.
The Ford F-250 proved itself twice by setting two land speed records on Aug. 19.
Using a mostly stock truck with the new 6.7-liter Power Stroke V8, the team first achieved a record speed of 171.123 mph running on regular diesel.
The previous B Production Diesel Truck record of 166.850 mph was held by a Duramax diesel GMC.
The Ford team then drained the fuel tank of the F-250 and refilled it with the B20 biodiesel blend to top even the diesel record by achieving a speed of 182 mph, smashing the previous B20 land speed record of 130.614 set by a BMW motorcycle.
The same Ford Super Duty truck was used for both record attempts with no calibration changes or modifications made between runs.
Driver Brent Hajek, owner of Hajek Motorsports, and an Oklahoma soybean farmer and trucking company owner, said, “I’m amazed at how, with very few changes from stock, we were able to accomplish this. There were absolutely no performance downsides to running on B20, as evidenced by the fact that I was able to push the truck to an even faster speed running on the B20 blend.”
Onlookers at the record-setting event were also impressed by the fact that even at these top speeds there was no exhaust smoke coming from the tailpipe, further illustrating the emissions benefits of the cleanest Power Stroke engine ever, running on clean, renewable biodiesel.
The biodiesel fuel used at this event was produced by a Missouri biodiesel plant and purchased and donated by the Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council.
“We were very excited to hear of the new land speed record set with a B20 biodiesel blend,” said Joe Jobe, chief executive officer of the National Biodiesel Board.Ford Motor Co. has been a great and influential industry partner in testing, proving out and promoting its support for B20 biodiesel blends, and these new records are a well-deserved achievement.”
Jobe said it was fitting that the record-setting driver is a soybean farmer as well.
“By utilizing the oil by-product from soy protein production, biodiesel enhances the food supply by reducing the cost of protein used for food and feed.”
In 2009 alone, the soybeans used to make 247 million gallons of soybean oil-based biodiesel produced soybean meal for 72 billion rations of protein.
Biodiesel reduces life cycle carbon emissions by over 50 percent compared to petrodiesel, and has been EPA certified as an Advanced Biofuel under the Renewable Fuel Standard-2.
As a low-cost option to help refiners meet RFS-2 requirements for advanced biofuels, biodiesel volumes are estimated to jump over 45 percent from 2009 levels to 800 million gallons this year, and will support more than 31,000 U.S. jobs in 2011.
EPA’s RFS-2 projections estimate that by 2013, biodiesel volumes will top 1.2 billion gallons.Biodiesel blends are a drop-in replacement for diesel fuel and can be transported on U.S. pipelines, as well as delivered using existing retail fueling infrastructure.
Biodiesel is also the only renewable alternative to diesel fuel that has an American Society of Testing and Materials and automaker-approved standard, ASTM D6751.