This week I’ve had the opportunity to visit the Ohio State University’s annual Farm Science Review show. It’s all about midwest farming and that includes corn.

While I was visiting the Ohio Corn Growers exhibit I found 5 time IHRA Funny Car Champion Mark Thomas. Here he is explaining his car, which runs on ethanol, to an FFA student.

Mark is not only a professional drag racer but a farmer himself. He has 500 Holstein cows and farms 2,200 acres of corn, soybeans, wheat, and alfalfa. You’d think that would be enough to keep him busy!

One of his passions is ethanol. He basically grows his own fuel and has had a mission to help educate the public about this renewable energy source. So that’s part of his message here at the show. He says the question he gets asked most often standing by his funny car is, “How much horse power?” It’s got 3,000 HP and goes from zero to 250 mph in 5.7 seconds! Of course he runs on ethanol and he says the car uses just over a gallon of ethanol per second.

You can listen to my interview with Mark here: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/fsr/fsr-08-thomas.mp3]