Supporting Sustainability

We love the community that C1 Racing has created over the last few years. But, like many of the teams and drivers that we speak to, we also want to do more to protect the environment that we race in. So, for the 2023 season we are delighted to be able to offer low-cost, optional carbon offsetting and tree planting to that you can help to mitigate your impact of each race weekend.

We’ll be able to track our combined offsetting and tree planting via our new C1 Racing Club Ecologi profile. There’s more information in the FAQs section below, but offsetting and tree planting is a fantastic first step. We still need to do all we can to reduce our footprint in the first place, and there are some tips on that below too.

We’d really encourage as many teams to sign-up to this as possible. It will be really simple to do as you’ll just see an option appear as an optional extra alongside the race entry fee on the BRSCC Race Hub. The cost per car for each race is between £30 and £60. So it’s not a very large incremental cost in the grand scheme of a race weekend!

Frequently Asked Questions

How much will it cost?

The cost per car will be set initially at between around £30 and £60 depending on the length of the race. The costs are based on the current Ecologi prices of £9.45 per tonne of offsetting and 24p per tree.

Please note that high demand for offsetting has pushed prices up a lot over the last 12 months. The C1 Club simply passes the costs straight through to the teams. There is no administration charge and this whole initiative has been setup for free. So, if the costs increase on Ecologi then the cost per race could increase.

Circuit	Total race time	Offsetting and tree planting cost	Tonnes of offsetting	Trees planted
Silverstone	4	£35.55	3	30
Oulton Park	3.5	£33.15	3	20
Silverstone	24	£59.25	5	50
Donington	3	£30.75	3	10
Snetterton	5	£37.95	3	40
Brands Hatch	3	£30.75	3	10
Pembrey	12	£45.00	4	30
Snetterton	6	£42.60	4	20
TOTALS	60.5	£315.00	28	210

How many tonnes are offset and how many trees are planted?

For a single 3-hour race weekend the cost will cover 3 tonnes of offsetting and 10 trees. For the Silverstone 24, that increases to 5 tonnes of offsetting and 50 trees.

As the race duration increases the number of trees, and eventually the amount of offsetting too, gradually increases. For example, the 2 x 3-hour race at Snetterton will be 4 tonnes of offsetting and 20 trees.

How has this been calculated?

We’ve factored in emissions from the race car during the race, qualifying and even assumed a test / practice session for each race (which we know not everyone will do). For each car we also make assumptions about the number of team members and the fact that they will have to drive to the circuit. And that larger teams may have a large truck to transport multiple race cars.

We also assume that some team members will have to spend a night or two in hotels and factor in money spent on consumables (from food to spare parts).

Overall, we think that we have been fairly cautious with our calculations. And even then, we’ve rounded up the number of tonnes of offsetting that we use for that race weekend.

Who has done the calculations?

The carbon footprint modelling has been done by James Cannings. James has been racing C1’s since 2019 (originally with his own Weenus Motorport team, but now with Jellysnake Motorport and Emax). James is the Chief Sustainability Officer of the global marketing and technology group MSQ, as well as the co-chair of the BIMA Sustainability Council. He also open-sources all his work via his free course for companies on how to measure, reduce and offset your company’s carbon footprint which has been used by thousands of businesses all over the world.

James has helped us to setup this whole initiative (including the modelling, drafting all these FAQs and setting up our Ecologi profile) at no cost to the club.

If you’d like any further details on how the measurements have been done and what is (and isn’t!) included, James would be more than happy to chat to you about it. You’ll find him in the paddock at most of our 2023 races.

How will other teams know that we have offset our emissions for the weekend?

Our plan is to create some stickers that we can give to teams to put on their cars for race weekends. It might be one sticker, or one per race. We’re still figuring that out!

Each race weekend we’ll use the funds taken from the BRSCC Race Hub to do the offsetting and tree planting, which we’ll be able to track on our C1 Racing Club Ecologi profile. And we’ll find regular ways to support this initiative and report on our combined impact.

I’m a small team with just one car. Surely my emissions are much lower than these big teams!

Actually, the emissions per car are fairly similar because the larger teams tend to bring more than one car and you end up with economies of scale, meaning the “emissions per car” end up being about the same. Of course, that’s not the case if a large team turns up with a big lorry, a large crew and only one car. But that’s not often the case.

Plus, we wanted to keep things really simple and just have a single cost per car for each race weekend.

How do we know that these offsetting projects are any good?

Ecologi are a very well known, credible and trusted partner. All of their offsetting projects meet with the Gold Standard or the Verified Carbon Standard. These are the standards that any company would have to prove in order to make an official carbon neutral claim.

You will also be able to click through on the C1 Racing Club Ecologi profile and see the exact projects that have been supported.

For more information on the projects and Ecologi themselves, you can take a look at their FAQ page.

I’ve heard that trees sometimes aren’t well looked after when they’ve been planted. How do we know that our trees will be around in years to come?

That’s a great question, and it’s true that there have been reports of poorly planted or poorly looked after trees that simply tick the box for tree planting without having an impact. However, Ecologi do all their tree planting via the Eden Reforestation Project who have an amazing track record of using local communities to plant the right types of trees, in the right way, and look after them. Again, more information about tree planting with the Eden Reforestation project can be found on the Ecologi FAQ page.

If we are offsetting more than we produce does that mean our racing is having a positive impact on the environment?

It’s true that the offsetting is rounded up from our calculations, and we are additionally planting trees. However, “carbon offsetting” and “carbon neutral” are rather misleading terms. They are a great starting point. But not the solution. Offsetting helps to stop the situation from getting worse through investing in projects like renewable energy in developing nations, or deforestation projects. Offsetting is a bit like smoking 20 cigarettes a day and then paying someone else not to smoke 20 cigarettes. It’s a good thing to do. It’s helped stopped the smoking situation from getting worse. But you still smoke 20 cigarettes!

During 2023 we’ll be looking at options for using carbon removals (instead of offsetting) Removals genuinely remove carbon from the air. But they are a lot more expensive at the moment. We’d hope to be able to provide multiple options (offsetting and removals) in the future.

In the meantime, we’ve included some tips below on how you could try to reduce your emissions in the first place during a race weekend.

Tips to reduce your carbon emissions over the race weekend

James’ first tip was to lift and coast at all times during the race. But as he’s a fellow C1 driver I suspect he’s just looking for an easier route to the podium! However, because the emissions from your race cars are only around 5% to 10% of your race weekend emissions, there’s actually a lot more you could do. For example:

1. Driving to the circuit is a big one. Make sure you do all you can to lift share. It might mean someone has to go a bit out of their way to pick someone up, but it makes a huge difference.
2. Similarly, are there public transport options that some of the team could take? Again, it might mean some help with lifts to a train station, but it’s a huge part of our emissions.
3. As more of us buy EVs, prioritise the lift sharing with those who can drive people to the circuit with an EV.
4. We get through a lot of tyres! Can you find a company in your local area that will recycle them? Or perhaps put them to good use in parks and gardens?
5. Transporting equipment and spares around is a huge part of our footprint. Make sure you’re being as efficient as possible here. Avoid bring lots of duplicate tools or parts that you don’t need (but it was just easier for everyone to throw everything into their cars!).

If you have any other tips on how we could all help reduce our carbon footprint over a race weekend, please do get in touch and we’ll add them to the site.