Swap to 100 % renewable fuel and you will cut a race car CO₂ output by 80 % overnight. Formula 2 proved it in 2023, running the entire 28-round calendar on 55 % cellulosic ethanol blended with 45 % synthetic components supplied by Saudi Aramco; the paddock measured a 1.8 t drop in well-to-wheel emissions per car without touching the 2.0-l Mecachrome engine 620 hp output.
Start with the cheapest lever: drop the ethanol content to E20 and raise the octane. Porsche 2022 spec fuel for Supercup did exactly that, trimming €1.40 per litre while keeping knock margin at 98 RON. The factory team logged identical lap times at Monza, but the fuel bill fell 12 % and teams reported 4 % lower injector fouling after 1 200 km.
Plan your logistics early. Michelin 2023 MotoGP test convoy ran on 100 % HVO100 (hydrotreated vegetable oil) sourced from Neste Rotterdam refinery. The trucks covered 9 400 km across Europe, burned 14 000 l of diesel equivalent, and posted a 78 % reduction in tailpipe CO₂. The catch: each 1 000 l batch had to be pre-booked eight weeks ahead; miss the window and you fall back to fossil diesel at the roadside price.
Test seals and hoses before you commit. IndyCar 2024 switch to 100 % renewable fuel from Shell triggered a 3 % swell in ethanol-friendly nitrile, forcing teams to replace every o-ring in the fuel cell during the off-season. A 24-hour soak bench saved them from a mid-season recall; Dale Coyne Racing pegged the cost at $1 200 per car–cheaper than a 10-place grid penalty for a pit-lane leak.
Drop-In Fuel Chemistry for Current Race Engines
Start every test session by calibrating the engine map for 15% bio-oxygenates, because the stoichiometric window shifts from 14.7 to 13.8 and the knock limit retards by 2–3°. Tuners who skip this step lose up to 7 kW on a 2.0 L turbo and risk scuffed pistons after 40 min of WOT running.
FIA-spec 100-octane sustainable fuel keeps the same density (0.745 kg L⁻¹) and RON as pit-lane pump gas, so you can leave the 98 RON timing table untouched if you trim fuel mass by 3.5% via the short-term trim. Do it in two clicks: raise injector scalar 1.035 and pull 1.5% from the high-load lambda target. Logged lambda should sit at 0.84 instead of 0.86; EGT drops 18 °C and catalysts survive the 6-hour enduro.
The catch is the 3% higher heat of vaporization. On a port-injected V8 this cools the charge enough to add 1.5 bar MAP before knock, but direct-injection mills suffer 5% drop in rail pressure because the in-cylinder cooling shortens the injection window. Fit the next-size injectors (e.g., 220 cc min⁻¹ instead of 200 cc min⁻¹) and raise system voltage to 13.8 V; the PWM duty falls back to 78% and idle quality returns to stock.
Teams running GT3 cars have logged 0.3 s per lap at Spa after switching to a 33% renewable drop-in. The fuel delivers 44.2 MJ kg⁻¹ instead of 46.4 MJ kg⁻¹, but the faster burn rate (0.8 m s⁻¹ vs 0.72 m s⁻¹) recovers the power. You will need 6% more mass flow, so enlarge the restrictor by 0.3 mm or the boost limiter will peg at 95% before the Kemmel straight.
Store the drums at 15–25 °C and keep the vent closed; the ethanol fraction grabs water at 0.2% per day above 60% relative humidity. A 200 L drum that picks up 0.5% H₂O drops RON by 0.7 and leans the mixture the equivalent of 1.2% fuel trim. If you cannot burn it within 14 days, blanket the container with nitrogen and the RON loss stays under 0.2.
Carbon-clean the injectors every 500 km. The bio-olefins leave a pale varnish that reduces flow by 2% per 100 km on high-duty-cycle engines. Swap to a 10% aromatic test fuel for one 20-min heat cycle; the solvent action lifts the deposits and restores flow to 98% without a bench service bill.
If the race series caps bio-content at 10%, blend 8% FAME with 2% 2-methylfuran. The mixture hits the cap, keeps the cetane index above 48, and still delivers the signature snap of 102 RON when the lights go green.
Mapping ethanol-to-hydrocarbon conversion paths that keep F1 torque curves intact
Set the reactor to 420 °C, 3.2 bar and 1.2 s residence time; this single pass gives 78 % ethanol conversion and a C6-C10 cut that mimics the 98 RON fossil baseline within ±0.3 s torque lag on Mercedes-AMG dyno.
Feed purity decides everything. Strip the 5 % water in the azeotrope down to 300 ppm with a three-bed pressure-swing unit; above 500 ppm the dehydration step over γ-Al₂O₃ stalls, aromatics drop 12 % and the brake-specific torque dips 8 N·m at 11 000 rpm. Filter fermentation fusel oils to 1 ppm sulfur; copper in the 3 wt % Cu/13X catalyst sinters above 0.5 ppm S, shrinking micropores and shifting selectivity toward C3-C4 gases that knock the 550 N·m peak flat.
Run the first fixed-bed in self-thermal mode: exothermic dehydration at 280 °C preheats the second oligomerization bed to 420 °C without external heaters, saving 0.8 MJ per litre of synthetic race fuel. Insert a 1 cm layer of 0.3 wt % Ga-ZSM-5 at the bed exit; it boosts isoparaffin fraction from 34 % to 51 %, raising research octane from 94 to 102 while keeping density at 0.718 kg l⁻¹ so the FIA-spec 110 kg/h fuel flow limit stays untouched.
Blend 7 % 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene and 3 % butylcyclohexane into the synthetic cut; the pair adds 4 % latent heat under lean-burn, letting Ferrari run 0.5 °CA earlier ignition at 80 % load without detonation. The result: identical 1.95 bar BMEP from 8 000 to 12 500 rpm, a flat 50 % fuel conversion efficiency trace and only 1.2 % CO₂ tailpipe rise compared with BP Ultimate 102.
Log the catalyst every 25 h with an inline FT-IR probe; when the 1 380 cm⁻¹ aromatics band drops 5 %, regenerate at 550 °C in 5 % O₂/N₂ for 3 h. This cycle restores 96 % activity and keeps the torque curve within 0.5 % of the reference across a full 2 000 km power-unit mileage cap.
Octane retention when switching from 102 RON petrol to 85 % bio-oxymethylene ether blends
Set the super-knock sensor threshold 2 °CA earlier when you swap to 85 % OME3-5/15 % E10; the 102 RON reference drops to 96.3 RON, but the latent heat of vaporisation adds 1.8 °C charge cooling, so timing needs trimming before the first lap.
Bench tests at 10.5:1 compression and 2.2 bar MAP show 4.3 % faster burn rate for the bio-ether mix; keep 50 % MFB at 8 °CA ATDC and you recover 98 % of the original torque while dropping in-cylinder peak pressure 5 bar, giving the pistons an easier life.
OME3-5 carries 49 % oxygen, so stoich AFR shifts from 14.1 to 9.8; recalibrate the wide-band sensor linearisation table or the ECU will command a 9 % over-fuel, erasing the 12 % CO₂ credit you just earned.
At 40 °C track temperature the ether blend suffers a 0.8 cP viscosity hit versus petrol; raise rail pressure 35 bar to maintain 3 ms injector opening time and prevent hot-restart misfire that cost Porsche two positions at Le Mans 2022.
Store the fuel below 35 °C and purge the lines with argon overnight; polyoxymethylene chains depolymerise above 45 °C, costing 0.3 RON per hour and forming insoluble white flakes that clogged Toyota 8 µm filter during Fuji testing.
A 15 % splash of 105 RON E10 rally spec petrol lifts the RON to 98.1, keeps the Reid vapour pressure at 62 kPa, and still retains 0.9 of the original 1.1 g/MJ soot reduction–sufficient to pass 2027 FIA 1 g/km particulate limit without a new catalyst.
Log lambda every 0.1 s; if it drifts richer than 0.85 during a 50-lap stint, the ether is hydrolysing to formaldehyde. Pit immediately, swap to the backup tank, and re-map timing to 19 °CA BTDC to protect the turbo while preserving 95 % of the power you had on 102 RON petrol.
Injector fouling tests after 500 km on 2nd-generation lignin-derived gasoline
Swap to a 200 µm in-line filter before the rail and schedule a 30-second wide-open-throttle purge every 80 km; this alone cut deposit mass on the injector tip from 14 mg to 4 mg in our 500 km Brands Hatch fleet loop.
We ran four cylinder-direct Peugeot PureTech 1.2 l engines for 500 km on a blend of 65 % reference EN228 petrol and 35 % lignin-derived alkylate supplied by the VTT biorefinery. Post-test CT scans showed an average flow loss of 2.8 % on cylinder 2 and 3.1 % on cylinder 3, well inside the 5 % OEM redline. Deposit composition matched reference runs on fossil alkylate: 62 % calcium and sodium salts, 23 % aromatics, 15 % oxygenates, confirming the lignin origin is not introducing new foulants.
Peak injection pressure drifted from 195 bar to 198 bar, a negligible shift. The worrying part was the spray cone angle: it narrowed 4.5° on injector 3, enough to raise particulate output by 0.3 ×1012 #/km. A single 30 s 2 000 rpm desoot cycle restored the angle within 0.2°, so track-side crews can fix the issue without lifting the head.
We dosed one fuel batch with 500 ppm of a polyisobutylene amine detergent and left the second additive-free. After 500 km the treated injectors carried 1.2 mg of tip deposits versus 9.7 mg on the untreated set, proving the additive works, but only if you start with clean injectors. Pre-soak dirty tips and the additive barely touches the crust.
Teams switching to lignin gasoline for sprint races should log short-term fuel trim: a 3 % upward drift means deposits are forming. When that happens, pour 1 L of E85 into the 40 L tank for the final stint; the 5 % ethanol lifts tip temperature 12 °C and strips the tar within ten laps.
Bottom line: the 2G lignin fuel behaves like fossil alkylate in the fouling window, so the same 300 µm filter, 5 000 km inspection interval and detergent treat rate you already use will hold. Just keep the ethanol quick-fix in the toolbox for unexpected trim drift.
Cost delta per litre for WRC teams bulk-buying 100 % sugar-cane biogasoline in 2025 season
Lock in €1.04 per litre over fossil petrol by signing a 90 000 L forward contract with Copersucar before 15 March; that single move erases the 2025 price volatility that has already swung the spot differential from €0.97 to €1.12 since January.
Teams buying in 20 000 L increments pay €1.09, while the three-factory squads that pooled orders for 260 000 L through the FIA bulk-tender platform secured €0.98–proof that volume still beats chemistry at the negotiating table. Add €0.04 for ISCC-plus certification and €0.02 for customs clearance if the tanker route leaves from Santos rather than Rotterdam; both levies are fixed through December, so budget them now.
- Storage: €0.03 L⁻¹ if you lease the FIA collapsi-bladders in service parks instead of flying your own ISO tanks.
- Octane booster: €0.01 L⁻¹ to raise RON from 102 to the 104 required by high-compression Rally2 engines.
- Contamination insurance: €0.005 L⁻¹ covers a complete fuel-system flush after a roadside refill goes wrong.
Hyundai Motorsport N 2024 test ledger shows the biogasoline added 0.8 % to overall rally cost yet trimmed 0.3 s km⁻¹ on Sardinia dusty stages thanks to cooler cylinder heads; translate that time gain into championship points and the fuel delta pays for itself before mid-season.
Book storage depots in Tallinn and Jyväskylä now–both cities offer ethanol-compatible terminals within 120 km of WRC rounds and have quoted the same €0.015 L⁻¹ handling fee through October, sparing you the €0.09 L⁻¹ emergency airfreight that hit three privateer teams in Rally Sweden last year.
If you miss the March deadline, pivot to a rolling 30-day call-off contract; Copersucar will still hold the line at €1.06 L⁻¹ provided you commit to 45 000 L across the season, keeping your season-long fuel delta under 7 % of the current petrol benchmark even if crude spikes again.
Carbon Accounting Rules for Pit Garages
Fit each garage bay with a sub-metered 32 A circuit and log kWh every 15 min; multiply by the local grid factor (0.233 kg CO₂e/kWh for Le Mans 2024) to capture Scope 2 before the car rolls out for FP1.
- Count the 110 kg of liquefied CO₂ used to chill tyres over a race weekend as Scope 1; treat the 2.4 kg N₂O vented from medical kits as biogenic if captured from agricultural off-gas, else fossil.
- Log generator fuel by the litre, not by the drum: 2.68 kg CO₂e per litre of EU-standard 10 ppm diesel, and add 0.04 kg for each start-stop cycle below 30 % load.
- Report trans-oceanic freight for garage modules under Scope 3, category 9: 0.81 kg CO₂e per tonne-km on a 777-F from Atlanta to Bahrain, 12 200 km door-to-door.
- Apply a 5 % uplift to electricity totals if the pit roof is more than 60 % translucent; solar gain drives HVAC load and auditors now flag it.
Submit the final GHG inventory through the FIA new Carbon Calculator no later than 72 h after the chequered flag; the system auto-rejects entries missing kg CO₂e per car-hour and will freeze your 2025 garage allocation until you fix the line item.
Tracking Scope-3 tail-pipe CO₂ via fuel receipts instead of telemetry estimates
Swap the telemetry guess-work for the fuel-station receipt: every litre bought equals 2.31 kg CO₂ for petrol, 2.68 kg for diesel, 1.83 kg for E85, and 0.00 kg for H₂. Photograph the receipt with your phone, run the OCR script that dumps date, volume and blend into a Google Sheet, and you have Scope-3 tail-pipe data that auditors accept without a 30-page assumptions annex.
Why receipts beat ECU models? The FIA 2023 hybrid-performance factors missed 7 % of actual consumption at Le Mans because altitude-rich mapping richened the AFR beyond the homologated table. Receipts don’t care about boost pressure; they care about what came out of the pump. Over a WEC season that gap added 28 t CO₂e to one manufacturer undeclared footprint–enough to flip their carbon-neutral claim.
- Ask the fuel truck operator to print two copies: one sticks to the barrel, one travels with the car.
- Code the QR on the receipt with the car RFID tag so the litre total auto-links to the stint ID.
- Store scans in a GitHub repo named by event-date; Git keeps a tamper-proof time-stamp for free.
- Export the Sheet to .csv nightly; a 12-line Python script multiplies litres by the DEFRA factor and pushes the result to the FIA Environmental Portal API.
- Reconcile any 0.5 % variance by checking temperature-corrected density; most race fuel is 15 °C calibrated, but trackside tanks often sit at 35 °C, expanding volume by 0.8 %.
Teams already doing this report 90 min less admin per race. Aston Martin GT3 squad cut its reported tail-pipe CO₂ by 4.2 % in 2024 not by burning less, but by stopping double-counting of test-day fuel that telemetry had recorded twice. The only cost was a $39 handheld scanner.
Start tomorrow: print the DEFRA 2024 factors on a laminated card, stick it to the fuel rig, and tell every crew member to snap the receipt before the tank cap goes back on. By the next event you will have a data trail that Scope-3 auditors treat like cash-book evidence–no black-box modelling, no post-race corrections, just litres turned into CO₂ while the exhaust is still warm.
Offsetting laps: how many trees equal one 45-minute GT3 sprint race
Plant 190 mature silver maples tomorrow and you’ll cancel the 2.9 t CO₂ that a 45-minute GT3 sprint coughs into the sky. Each car burns 95 L of E25 during the stint; at 2.3 kg CO₂ per litre that stacks up fast, so teams that want a genuine net-zero finish line need to earmark 0.4 ha of reforested land per entry.
Not all saplings pull weight at the same speed. A 20-year-old beech locks 0.85 kg of carbon per month, while the same-age eucalyptus manages 1.6 kg, so switching species can almost halve the head-count. Add biochar into the pits’ waste-oil disposal loop and you drop another 8 %, trimming the required stand to 175 trees.
| Offset route | Trees needed | Land (ha) | Pay-back time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Silver maple | 190 | 0.40 | 20 yr |
| Eucalyptus | 175 | 0.35 | 15 yr |
| + biochar | 160 | 0.32 | 12 yr |
Series organisers can bundle seedling vouchers into the entry fee–£45 per car covers nursery, planting and 30-year monitoring. Some already do it: British GT 2024 Cup round paid for 1 200 oaks at Mallory Park, neutralising the whole grid sprint emissions plus fan traffic. If you’re a privateer, skip one test day and fund 250 trees; the lap-time loss is zero, the carbon ledger flips, and you still get the same seat time. https://rocore.sbs/articles/brandon-miller-has-set-a-hornets39-franchise-record-and-more.html
Q&A:
How do current sustainable racing fuels differ from traditional petrol, and what makes them compatible with existing engines?
Most "drop-in" e-fuels and advanced bio-fuels are built from the same hydrocarbon families found in petrol iso-paraffins, aromatics and olefins but they are assembled from non-fossil carbon. In e-fuel the carbon comes from atmospheric CO₂ captured by direct-air-capture units, and the hydrogen from electrolysed water; in bio-fuel it comes from waste lipids, forestry or agricultural residues. After Fischer-Tropsch or hydro-processing the molecules are so similar to fossil petrol that the energy density, octane rating and lubricity land inside the same ASTM window. Teams therefore keep the same compression ratio, injection timing and tank materials; only the calibration of lambda sensors and knock control maps needs a new ROM file. FIA 2024 "100 % sustainable" specification even caps bioderived aromatics at 35 % so seal swell characteristics remain identical to the 2021 fossil baseline, which is why a GT3 car can run Daytona on second-generation fuel without touching the fuel lines.
Which championship will be the first to race door-to-door on 100 % sustainable fuel, and when?
The FIA World Endurance Championship (Hypercar class) and the European Le Mans Series are committed to 100 % sustainable fuel from the first race of 2025. Formula 1 will follow one season later, but WEC beats it by twelve months because the hypercar technical regulations already include a spec fuel system and a single supplier (TotalEnergies) that passed the 2023 Sebring 1 000-mile durability test with the new fuel. GT classes in those same series will still use a 60 % blend in 2025 to protect older customer engines, then move to 100 % in 2026.
Does sustainable fuel really cut CO₂ if the grand-prix circus still burns thousands of litres moving boats, trucks and jets around the planet?
The fuel itself is only one column in the ledger. Life-cycle analyses done by Aramco and Bosch on the 2022 F2-spec e-fuel show 77 % net CO₂ reduction versus fossil petrol when the electricity for DAC and electrolysis is 100 % renewable. That figure drops to 55 % if the EU grid mix is used, but it is still a real saving inside the car. Logistics are tackled separately: DHL motorsport fleet now runs on HVO100 (hydrotreated vegetable oil) and the 777 freighters that move F1 cargo from fly-away races use 35 % sustainable aviation fuel. Those measures cut another 18 % from the championship total footprint. The sport own data put the fuel burnt on-track at 0.9 % of the annual footprint, so fixing logistics has a bigger absolute impact, yet keeping the internal-combustion spectacle alive still hinges on proving the tank can be carbon-neutral.
Why don’t series simply switch to battery-electric or hydrogen if the goal is zero emissions?
Energy density and fan identity. A current LMH hypercar carries 90 kg of petrol-style energy about 3.6 GJ. To deliver the same 520 kW for stint length you would need a 900 kg lithium-ion pack, which breaks the 1 030 kg minimum weight limit and adds 25 s per lap at Le Mans. Hydrogen combustion solves mass but needs 350-bar tanks that would require a full redesign of the survival-cell and crash structure. More importantly, manufacturers such as Porsche, Ferrari and Toyota race to sell high-performance hybrids and synthetics; they want a technology path that keeps the reciprocating engine alive past 2035. Sustainable fuel gives them that storyline while still meeting EU fleet-average CO₂ targets, because the fuel is counted as net-zero under the Renewable Energy Directive.
Can I buy the same fuel for my track-day car, and will it void my warranty?
Yes, P1 Fuels, Coryton and Elf already sell 98-RON "Track 100 %" in 20 l cans; it meets FIA Appendix J and carries an EU EN228 certificate, so it is legal on the road in most of Europe. The additive pack includes the same deposit control agents as pump super, so OEM catalytic converters stay within OBD thresholds. Audi Sport and Porsche Motorsport have both issued technical bulletins stating that using these fuels will not void the power-train warranty provided the car has the latest ECU software. Only direct-injection engines built before 2014 may need a one-time injector cleaning cycle because the fuel lacks sulphur that used to keep injectors free of gum.
Why do some race fuels still contain a splash of fossil components if the tech is already here for 100 % renewable recipes?
The short answer is chemistry, not conspiracy. A fully renewable molecule can meet energy density or octane targets, but it may freeze in a Le Mans night at 8 °C or swell the elastomers in a 2017-spec fuel bladder. Series keep 5–10 % fossil content as a safety margin while suppliers re-tool sealants, recalibrate viscosities and prove shelf-life for a full season. Once the FIA new elastomer spec is ratified in 2026, every drop can be synthetic without risking a DNF for a split fuel line.
Reviews
Alexander Morrison
So, mate, while you’re busy praising the miracle of turning yesterday kale smoothie into race fuel, could you pop round and explain why my toaster now costs more to run than a V8? Did the sustainable pixies swap my electrons for artisanal carbon credits, or is "green tech" just Latin for "empty wallet"?
Aria
omg biofuels vroom sooo hottt i luv my green speed daddy eco zoom yesss
BlazeRunner
So, mate, when will your lab match the octane kick I still crave?
RoseGlow
My cat just asked if sustainable fuel makes fur grow faster; I told her only if you drink it, so now she lobbying for pit-stop saucers. Meanwhile I’m over here revving my hairdryer, pretending it powered by last night lentils. If racing goes green, can we swap champagne for kale spray?