The article I like best about Thursday’s memorial for Indy Car driver Paul Dana is from Indystar.com.
Lauded for being more than just a race car driver, Paul Dana was honored Thursday as a leader in the renewable fuel industry.
Dana brought together three of the nation’s leading corn-based fuel manufacturers — previously fierce rivals — to sponsor an open-wheel car in 2003.
Ethanol not only had its decals on Dana’s Indy car when he died Sunday of injuries suffered in an accident at Homestead-Miami Speedway, its product was in every Indy Racing League car.
The IRL is using a 10-percent mixture of ethanol this season and will switch totally in 2007.
“He was taking (ethanol’s) message to the world, not just a state or a country,” IRL chaplain Bob Hills said in a celebration of Dana’s life at a theatre along the course he was to have raced this weekend.
“Ethanol wasn’t just a sponsor to him,” Hills said of Dana. “At times he was tough to shut up about it. Ethanol and the IRL were brought together because of him.”
Amen.