I know, I know – the “Ballad of Ricky Bobby” is about NASCAR and this is an Indy car …. whatever. It still works. Believe it or not, there are lots of people out there in the real world who actually, shockingly – don’t really know the difference. I admit it … I never knew the difference until last year.

But, one major difference is that next year Indy will be running on 100 percent ethanol – NASCAR won’t. As one of the few remaining major racing series worldwide that uses gasoline for its competition fuel, NASCAR just made the switch to unleaded gasoline, something most of us have been using for over 20 years. Discussions about a future switch to either E85 or just plain ethanol are only in preliminary stages.

Meanwhile, the Team Ethanol Indy show car is always a hit when it makes a pit stop, like at the ACE meeting last week. This week, the car is on display at the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council/Missouri Corn Growers Association booth at the Missouri State Fair.