With the drive to decarbonise the motorsport industry a variety of clean powertrains were developped and raced. While extensive lap time optimisation has been performed on hybrid and battery electric cars, no such optimisation has been performed on hydrogen fuel cell racing cars
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With the drive to decarbonise the motorsport industry a variety of clean powertrains were developped and raced. While extensive lap time optimisation has been performed on hybrid and battery electric cars, no such optimisation has been performed on hydrogen fuel cell racing cars yet. This work models the Forze 8, a hydrogen fuel cell electric racing car, and compares its optimal lap, found by solving optimal control problems, to racing cars equipped with battery electric and internal combustion engine powertrains, all with the same peak power and weight on two different tracks. In qualifying scenarios, the battery electric racing car is faster than the internal combustion engine car by 1.0 [s] on both tracks, while the fuel cell electric car is slowest, trailing 5.3 and 3.8 [s] behind the battery electric car at Assen and Zandvoort respectively. In racing scenarios, the internal combustion engine car is quickest with the fuel cell electric car behind by 5.6 and 2.9 [s] at Assen and Zandvoort respectively. The battery electric car has the best single-lap performance due to its high continuous power, while the fuel-cell electric car is better suited for endurance scenarios as it carries more energy. This work shows that both battery and fuel cell electric racing cars can be valid alternatives for internal combustion engine racing cars.