Last season the Finnish Championships in Formula Fords was run with RE85 fuel by St1. This is bioethanol, 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. The cars used ATL fuel cells, and there was some concerns ethanol might cause some damage to the fuel cells. ATL does offer fuel cells with a treatment that makes them durable even when used with ethanol, but apparently only Janne Knuutinen had one of these cells.
On my car a new fuel cell was fitted prior to the previous season. My car, and that of Ville Kivinen, were built at the same time and fitted with new ATL fuel cells at the time. The cells had consequtive serial numbers.
Olli Kaurala had inspected Ville's car and the fuel cell after a season of running ethanol. Apparently there was serious leakage in many seams. This of course made me concerned too. However, when I today inspected my cell, it was absolutely fault free. No signs of any kind of leakage, actually quite on the contrary - the cell looked bran new! Now, our team had flushed the cell after every race with gasoline and then drained the cell empty. This apparently is a good practice.
It seems this season (2010) Zetec's will have the opportunity to run either gasoline or RE85. Personally I will be happy to run ethanol. The fuel works well, and with the Motec ECU I have full data logging capability as well.
