Two new pieces of research published in the International Journal of Sports Marketing & Sponsorship suggest that motorsport has not considered environmental issues sufficiently.

Paul Tranter, senior lecturer at University College, New South Wales researched the impact of motorsport in the urban environment and claims it can have a major detrimental impact:
 
"The case studies [in the research] demonstrate that allowing motorsports events to be staged in significant urban places supports the growth of conspicuous consumption, pollution and the use of fossil fuels, both directly via the events themselves and in the long-term impacts on the behaviour of motorists and consumers. Motorsports events and their associated corporate interests represent many of the attitudes and behaviours that will need to be changed or abandoned to limit resource depletion and greenhouse gas creation."

Tranter claims that the marketing of sports events should not be considered independently of the major challenges facing the world:
"Civic leaders have a responsibility to demonstrate a commitment to a sustainable future through a policy of reserving their city’s significant public spaces for sporting events that are best practice models for sustainability. Motorsports events should now be considered ‘out of place’ as mega-events in a city’s major public spaces.

The findings directly challenge the trend of staging more motorsport events in urban environments. Formula 1 in particular has embraced the concept with new races in Valencia and Singapore being added to the traditional Grand Prix in Monaco.

In a separate paper published in the Journal, Greg Dingle, lecturer at Victoria University, Melbourne has assessed research into the sustainability of motorsport.

Dingle also believes that the motorsport industry faces a serious challenge as it will be increasingly under the environmental spotlight.

"The dependence of motorsport and its followers on the consumption of natural resources for the manufacture and ongoing use of racing machines, and the passenger vehicles they inspire, is an example of motorsport's relationship with unsustainable patterns of consumption.

"In a situation where environmental problems are changing government policy and creating new markets, marketers of motorsport are likely to need to give serious consideration to how they might make their events genuinely sustainable."

Dingle points to the efforts of some motorsport teams in making their technologies, fuels and practices more environmentally friendly. He suggests that some of the technology developed in the sport could help to resolve environmental problems.

Overall, however, he believes that a great deal more research is needed on the environmental impact of sport, but that sport will become greener in the coming decades if it is to survive.

Related links

Executive summary: Is motorsport now a race out of place?

Executive summary: Sustaining the race: a review of literature pertaining to the environmental sustainability of motorsport