The future of motorsport in an age where the internal combustion engine is being phased out of sale has regularly been questioned, but biofuels tuned to meet the power demands and storage requirements of motor racing could be the solution.
This is what Italian biofuel specialists Eni and Malaysian state-owned petrol company Petronas are banking on, signing a feasibility agreement to determine if bio-petrols could be potentially used in motorsport and whether these developments could lead to better biofuels in the future.
This agreement comes at a particularly interesting time, given that many countries are rapidly scaling up their biofuel ambitions in an attempt to avoid the huge increases in crude oil and petrol prices due to issues at the Strait of Hormuz.
With the geopolitical situation causing reverberating effects on fossil fuels that will linger for a long time and are guaranteed to have an effect on motorsports so reliant on specialist fossil fuels, could biofuels be the answer?
Is Biofuels The Future Of Formula 1?
Biofuels are already used as part of the Formula 1 machinery, with sustainable fuels used in its feeder and support divisions, F2 and F3, as well as for the many logistics vans required to take the teams from track to track.
However, there have been attempts to move away from petrol fuels and towards electrofuels or biofuels with additives that allow for them to be used in the same cars without a power penalty.
At present, Formula 1’s technical regulations require what it calls “advanced sustainable fuels”, a type of drop-in electrofuel designed to be compatible with existing car engines and historic cars of the past.
The sustainable fuels used in F1 today are compatible with the McLaren MP4/8, the famous 1988 championship-winning car driven by Ayrton Senna, and given this cross-compatibility, it is possible that one of the conditions for the Eni/Petronas joint-biofuels project would also need to work with older cars.
Alongside the fuel regulations, the F1 technical regulations mandate a 50-50 split between electrical and petrol power, which not only reduces the amount of fuel needed per car per race, but also makes sustainable fuels not available at massive scales a possible option.
The current cars show a crossroads for F1 and motorsport more broadly; whereas petrol and diesel cars are increasingly withdrawn from public use, motorsport must adapt or be reduced to an irrelevance.
Given that Formula E already exists as an all-electric motorsport, Formula 1 needs to take a different approach, and adopting hybrid cars and sustainable biofuels could become its contribution to the wider motoring world.
In doing so, it would be part of a long and proud tradition of alternative fuels.
The First Biofuel-Powered Racing Car
The use of biofuel in motorsport is nothing new; the very first car to be registered under the Le Mans Prototype (LMP1) regulations 22 years ago was also the first car to be powered solely using biofuels.
The Nasamax DM139 was powered by a modified Judd V10 engine designed to be powered by bioethanol rather than conventional petrol. Reporting from the time does not make clear exactly which fuel was used, but it was known to be a first-generation biofuel made from food crops.
It competed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 2004 following a remarkable debut at the 1000km of Monza, where the independent and relatively low-budget team qualified ninth and finished eighth overall and in class.
The bioethanol used at the time was known to be only two-thirds as energy dense as petrol, which required higher fuel flow rates and either more pit stops (dooming the team to last place) or a larger fuel tank.
Le Mans’ governing body, the Automobile Club de l’Ouest (Automobile Club of the West, or ACO), authorised the team to have a larger fuel tank than other racers. Rather than the 90-litre fuel tank that was standard in other cars, it was allowed a 120-litre tank to ensure it could compete.
The team qualified in a respectable 14th place overall and 13th in a very competitive category, ten seconds from pole position.
The race was not quite as fortunate, as the car-breaking nature of the Circuit de la Sarthe caused the Nasamax car to develop a misfire, leading to an infuriatingly long pit stop which at one point put them in 48th place. Even then, they could not diagnose and fix it.
Thankfully, they made an incredible recovery and went on to finish 17th overall and seventh in class, an astonishing result for a small team and the first ever car wholly powered by biofuels.
This aberration could be the future, and could encourage the breakthrough of highly sustainable fuels which do not require crops or land to make.
