Forze Hydrogen Racing Pioneers of Hydrogen Innovation in Motorsports

Discover how Forze Hydrogen Racing is advancing hydrogen-powered racing with the Forze IX, a cutting-edge race car featuring a unique dual fuel-cell system for maximum efficiency. We sat down with the Business and Finance Manager of Forze, Renzo Bootsma, who shared insights into the development of this innovative vehicle, designed and built entirely in-house to demonstrate the potential of hydrogen in motorsport and sustainable mobility.

As the team prepares to showcase one of their hydrogen powered race cars at Rematec and compete in the Supercar Challenge, they continue to push the boundaries of innovation. Read the full article to explore their technology, development process, and vision for the future of hydrogen mobility.

Can you introduce yourself and the team, and tell us a bit more about the project and how it all started?

Yes, of course. My name is Renzo. I'm this year's business and finance manager of Forze Hydrogen Racing Team XVIII. I'm responsible for the entire business department of the team, which currently consists of 12 people, all making sure that the operations of the foundation keeps on working well. From operations, so the organization of our events, track tests and races, to partnerships, where we acquire and maintain our relations with partners, and marketing, who share the progress and vision of Forze to the world. Furthermore I’m responsible for all finances, and I'm in the board of Forze together with three other people, in which we ensure to meet the team goal and vision for the whole year. 

Forze and the project started in 2007 with a small group of students that built a go-kart in the Formula Zero competition, hence the name Forze, derived from the competition we were in, which we won for three consecutive years. Then we developed a Formula Student car, which is for another competition, and we started competing with combustion and electric-powered vehicles. A couple of years later, we transitioned into full-size race cars, with the Forze VI already being a record lap holder at the Nürburgring in Germany. And from that moment onwards, we kept on developing full-size race cars with successes in motorsport classes, competing against petrol-powered cars. Currently, we're developing our Forze IX, our latest car, which is a hydrogen-powered electric car with two integrated fuel cells, which is quite unique, as two separate fuel cells will work together to get all the power that we need to drive the car.

Our team switches every year, so from August to August, you join the team either full-time or part-time. In total, we have more than 450 team members and alumni, with most of them still being really active to help achieve our goal and help the current team with the challenges we face.

Could you tell us more about the development process? You already highlighted it, but maybe there's more to add. And how does the car contribute to the circular economy?

So, the development of this current car goes quite far back already, a little more than 5 years. Whilst designing the car, we take into account certain manufacturers of parts of the car that we don't have in-house but have to buy. That way we know who to partner with, which is very important for us as we have limited budgets available.

The unique part of this car, as I previously mentioned, is that it has two separate balance of plants, which are integrated together in the car, and combined they produce the power of our car. In our case, the fuel cell works with hydrogen coming in one side, and oxygen in the other. In our so called ‘stack’ (the fuel cell with several membranes ‘stacked’ onto each other), these two react back to water and electricity is produced. This electricity is used to propel the car. In our previous cars we had only one of those fuel cells producing the power. When designing our current car there was no stack large enough to fit our power goals, so we decided to integrate two of them and then combine them into one big power system. This is really the unique part of our car. Next to these fuel cells, we store energy in our accumulator that is regenerated during braking. In this way, we use energy more efficiently. 

Most of the car is developed in-house, from the chassis to the fuel cell system, the entire drivetrain, the gearboxes, and the embedded systems - everything is developed in-house. All the electronics and control systems that are in the car are developed here in Delft.

What excites you most about showcasing your project at the event? Will we see the technique and the gained knowledge on hydrogen cars in the development of the automotive industry in the next years? And how will this impact the future for cars?

What we are most excited about taking our car to Rematec, is that I think it's really cool to show people the abilities of hydrogen. In our case, in motorsports. We chose to do it because everyone sees a race car and they think, oh, wow. And when we tell them that it drives on hydrogen, everyone's even more impressed.

It's quite a unique project, as there are only a handful of race cars using hydrogen fuel cells, with two of them being here in Delft! I think by showing that to the public, it really shows our innovation and the uniqueness of this technique in motorsports. 

For the future development, Forze builds these cars to show the potential of hydrogen being a sustainable energy carrier. The sustainable future would be to use electrolyzers powered by green energy from windmills or solar panels of which the power can't be used on the grid to make hydrogen. In this way, energy (in the form of hydrogen gas) is captured and can then later be used for cars, larger infrastructure, or other purposes. 

Hydrogen cars overall, excluding the infrastructure part, are a really good solution as a fuel cell electric vehicle doesn't emit any CO2 or nitrogen. There are also internal combustion engines with hydrogen, but then still the hydrogen is burned, meaning that nitrogen is emitted through the air, while in our car and in other fuel cell electric vehicles, the only emission is water vapor. 

As the power is generated while driving by the fuel cell, and during braking by our electric motors, instead of charging a large battery before driving, we require a much smaller battery compared to a Tesla, for example. As a result, we also need less precious metal materials to build our car, contributing to the development of a more sustainable alternative for mobility.

What is your goal for this car for this year?

Our goal is to compete in the GT class of the Supercar Challenge, which is a motorsport category here in the Netherlands. This includes races at renowned tracks like Assen and Zandvoort. We want to finish as high as possible in the rankings and even win races in the highest section of that competition.

With the previous car, we already had some successes in the lower classes of that competition, but with this car we really aim to excel even further and win races, and be the fastest on track. We want to inspire the world with the potential and the abilities of hydrogen, not only in motorsport and in cars, but just overall.