It really depends on the energy generation mix on the country were they're racing.

Electricity generation is however emitting less and less (as renewables become an ever larger fraction of it) which makes electric cars directly have less emissions all the while requiring no vehicle changes whatsoever, something not all possible with non-electric means of motorised transportation since the "generate the energy" directly in the vehicle so you need to upgrade the vehicle to improve the energy generation.

So yeah, that stuff is promoting emission free propulsion (already so today in some countries, certainly tomorrow in all), something which cannot be said of the other options.

It's pretty stupid to go after the "not yet perfectly ecological" alternative when there are a ton of "outright anti-Ecological and will never be any better" ones to go after.