HARC 3-year Sustainability Strategy

Update 2025

1. The HARC & historic circuit racing

The overall goal of the HARC (Historic Auto Racing Club / Foundation)

• The promotion and support for historic car racing in the Netherlands and abroad for the foundation members, the participants and general visitors.
• The sustainability strategy assure continuration of historic racing for the foreseeable future and presere our racing heritage for the next generations.

Historic car racing, especially on circuits, is one of the few automotive racing activities that continues to gain interest. In the Netherlands, the annual Historic Grand Prix with over 400 historic racing cars is the second largest car racing event after the F1.

To ensure historic racing can continue to increase its popularity the “HARC 3 Years Sustainability Strategy” has been put together.

The general target for sustainability

• Assure historic car racing’s increasing popularity can be continued while raising awareness of its sustainability impact and reducing this impact over the full scope of the events and for all parties involved.

This strategy will focus on the three main areas, each with a clear strategy, goals, and measurable objectives.

• Historic Racing Cars
• Events
• Organization

2. Office & daily opperations

The HARC in 2025 celibrates her 50th anniversery. It evolved from a small group of racing enthousiasts into a near professional organisation of over 1100 members and its own office for the daily opperations.

The office is located is normally manned for 2 or 3 days per week, however in the weeks leading up to a race event often several people use the office as a central communication hub.

Over 15 years ago this particular office was selected because of its easy access and relative close proximity to the circuit at Zandvoort. It is located on the first floor of an older building above a garage. A part of the first floor is also used as a residential area.

The following actions have been taken to have a more sustainable office and daily opperations

1. Installation of 150+ Solar panels,
2. More efficient heating system
3. Upgrade of the office lighting system to LED
4. Instalation of blinds to prevent the office from heating up in summer and thus the use of the airconditioning
5. Rental of storage facilities very close to the circuit

When applying for the FIA accreditiation a new assesment was made of the office and the daily operations.

The Challenge

• The office is not permanently manned, but still requires heating and electricity round the clock, albeit being it at a lower rate.
• The Current office has no facilities to accomodate groups of more than 8 people, which means another location needs to be hired.
• The storage location cannot be heated and has poor isolation, this already has resulted in merchandise and equipment not being suitable anymore for sale or usage.
• The IT infrastructure needs to be opperational 24/7, a large part already has been moved into the cloud but some still remains in the office.

Strategy/Objective

• More efficient usage of heating and electricity
• Meeting facilities available but need to be shared, most HARC meetings are in the evening, which allows the facilities to be used by others during the day.
• Avoid waste by having better storage facilities.
• Either move the entire IT structure to the cloud or use a shared office server.

Potential partners & Stakeholders

• The currently owner of the office building would like to use the area as an office for their business. Their current office is spread over two buildings, which does not help their sustainability plans.
• A local sponsor of the HARC has reduced its staff and now has some office area available. This area will be shared with their staff and joint usage of all facilities
• The same sponsor offered a storage area in the same building which has shared heating and is a high security. This will reduce waste and frequent trips between the office and the storage area.
• QControl the IT support company of the HARC will try to convert the infrastructure to be come fully cloud- based and access will be done through the shared Wifi system in the office.

Strategy, timeline and measurable objectives

3. Historic Racing Cars

At present racing cars are considered Historic if they race under the FIA Appendix K, typically until 2000. There are also local racing series in which cars participate from the same era but adhere to different regulations. The HARC does provide support for both types of historic racing series.

The challenge

• Historic racing cars from these periods use a traditional ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) which runs on regular petrol or in some cases methanol. Some of the later cars do have emission reduction equipment but the majority hasn’t. Our aim is to keep the vehicles as historic correct as possible to ensure its historic provenance. Installing sophisticated emission reduction equipment or conversion to electric propulsion would be detrimental to the historic accuracy of said vehicle. At the same time, we aim to minimize our environmental impact and encourage all parties involved to contribute towards a sustainable historic motor sport.

Strategy / Objective

• Promote the use of alternative fuels to reduce emissions with only minor changes to the technical configuration and have one complete racing class running on synthetic fuel for the 2026 season.
• 80% or more of the racing participants use environmentally friendly fuel, for instance, synthetic fuels, with only minor changes to the engines or vehicles, thus securing their historic correctness.

Potential partners & Stakeholders

• HARC, as the event organizer and class representative for various historic racing classes
• Ecomaxx, as the supplier of synthetic fuels

Strategy, timeline and measurable objectives

Remark 1:

The NK GTTC and Supersixties are both racing classes running under the supervision of the HARC. The aim is to have the vast majority of racing classes (80+ %) running on HARC events to participate on clean fuels, unless there is a valid technical reason not to, for instance, the reliability of the engines. The regulations of both classes has been changed since the start of the 2024 to allow for clean fuels, since these cannot always bought at the pump.

Remark 2:

Over the last two years an initiative has started to combine the transport of racing cars to various events. A much more environmentally friendly concept compared with individual transport by car and trailer. Of course, only trucks that comply with the latest Euro regulations are used. Several racing classes are already using this initiative now as a standard. The HARC will continue to promote this initiative for all racing participants and classes.

4. Events, catering and sustainability

The HARC organizes or provides support for several racing events per year, varying from large events like the Historic Zandvoort Trophy, the Zandvoort 250 and the Historic Grandprix, to smaller events like track days. Typically, these events are held at the Zandvoort Circuit and occasionally at the TT Circuit Assen or other smaller venues like Circuit Meppen.

The challenge

• The number of visitors varies from 20+k, for the larger events to approximately 100 for the track days. The HARC tends to provide coffee and some catering for its members during these events. This results in a waste stream that is currently not separated and relies on the waste disposal facilities of the venue.

Strategy/Objective

• Create awareness of the visitors on the impact of waste stream on the event, thus creating change in behaviour and encouraging their contribution to a more environmentally friendly event.
• Particular waste streams are paper coffee cups, plastics, and paper/cartons.
• Reduce the amount of commercial paper and event brochures to a minimum, since the vast majority only has a very short durability.
• Waste streams for oil and other chemicals are already mandatory for each venue.

Potential partners

• HARC, as event organizer
• Smith & Dorlas supplier of coffee and related equipment
• Boels, equipment provider for the larger events.
• Circuit Zandvoort, Track owner/operator and F1 promotor
• TT Circuit Assen, Track owner/operator, and MotoGP promotor.
• Other Circuit Owners/Operators

Strategy, timeline and measurable objectives

4. Events, catering and sustainability

The HARC organizes or provides support for several racing events per year, varying from large events like the Historic Zandvoort Trophy, the Zandvoort 250 and the Historic Grandprix, to smaller events like track days. Typically, these events are held at the Zandvoort Circuit and occasionally at the TT Circuit Assen or other smaller venues like Circuit Meppen.

The challenge

• The number of visitors varies from 20+k, for the larger events to approximately 100 for the track days. The HARC tends to provide coffee and some catering for its members during these events. This results in a waste stream that is currently not separated and relies on the waste disposal facilities of the venue.

Strategy/Objective

• Create awareness of the visitors on the impact of waste stream on the event, thus creating change in behaviour and encouraging their contribution to a more environmentally friendly event.
• Particular waste streams are paper coffee cups, plastics, and paper/cartons.
• Reduce the amount of commercial paper and event brochures to a minimum, since the vast majority only has a very short durability.
• Waste streams for oil and other chemicals are already mandatory for each venue.

Potential partners

• HARC, as event organizer
• Smith & Dorlas supplier of coffee and related equipment
• QControl supplier as software supplier
• Boels, equipment provider for the larger events.
• Circuit Zandvoort, Track owner/operator and F1 promotor
• TT Circuit Assen, Track owner/operator, and MotoGP promotor.
• Other Circuit Owners/Operators

Strategy, timeline and measurable objectives

6. Sustainability implementation plan.

Approximately 5 years ago the HARC started its sustainability activities and the results have shown our commitment.

The required activities were carried out by the various board members, the board-advisors and various members/volunteers. The FIA accreditation process has shown the need for more dedicated coordination of the various activities and was largely done by one of our advisors. The next step is to have one of the board members being held responsible for the sustainability program and to have a coordinator taking an active role in the roll out.

At our next board meeting in August 2024 both persons will be appointed. They will be responsible for the coordination of the Sustainability strategy as listed above and participation of the various stakeholders. At every subsequent board meeting, typically monthly, a short update on the sustainability program will be provided. Towards our members our monthly newsletter, will be used for any announcements or obtained results.

The complete overview of our sustainability program will be presented at our yearly members meeting, typically held in May. This will include the results of the EMS (Environmental Management System) and the CIP (Clean in Place), as well as feedback from the stakeholders and participants.

This will show the HARC’s commitment to the environment and our endeavours towards sustainable historic car racing.