The future of motoring will rely far less on petrol and diesel fuels and the fuels that will be used will increasingly take the form of synthetic e-fuels and biofuel.
The safety infrastructure is in place for this transition, with vacuum relief valves available to ensure that the fuel can be prepared and stored safely and transported securely.
Every major category of motorsport is leading the transition, including Formula 1, which uses sustainable fuels alongside a complex hybrid engine in order to deliver fast racing whilst reducing carbon emissions and keeping fuel use at a sustainable level.
What Has Made Switching To Biofuel Complex?
Up until the 2020s, biofuel was not a standard part of motorsport, and its path to widespread acceptance was as fraught as the route biofuels took towards widespread worldwide usage.
In some countries, most notably Brazil, flex-fuel cars have existed for decades, and ethanol-powered cars existed before that, but outside of the unusual legislative and agricultural circumstances found in Brazil, biofuels were historically not seen as cost-effective.
For motorsport, the issue was not just a matter of cost but performance; the Nasamax DM139 was the first ever car to be entered for the 24 Hours of Le Mans using bioethanol as a fuel but was allowed to carry extra field due to the lower fuel efficiency per litre.
As well as this, up until the early 2000s, many production cars were not designed to use petrol with a high level of ethanol, which meant that some of the fuel seals and pumps could potentially weaken and break if it was used in a car.
What made this worse was that in motorsport at the time, high-octane fuel that provided more power per litre was considered more valuable. Up until the rules were restricted, some cars relied on so-called “rocket fuel” made from toluene that provided astonishing levels of performance during the turbo era of Formula 1 in the 1980s.
As well as this, there was a lack of consistency surrounding fuels. IndyCar, an American open-wheel series, used pure methanol up until 2007 when it was replaced with an E85 blend of petrol and ethanol.
This made it easier for IndyCar to make the transition to biofuels in 2023, but NASCAR, which used unblended petrol until an E15 blend was introduced, found the transition more difficult.
What Was The Turning Point For Biofuels?
Ultimately, outside of a general push towards sustainability and climate consciousness, the big turning point for many racing leagues was viability.
The remarkable high-profile success of the Nasamax meant that other manufacturers and racing leagues took notice of the infrastructure and safety requirements, but it was a long road between this one-off success and the universal adoption of sustainable fuels at Le Mans in 2022.
There were some other one-off vehicles that provided some excitement; the ecoF3 (also known as the WorldF3rst) was the first car made with an engine formula that ran on biodiesel and was made from 100 per cent biodegradable components.
Whilst the car itself was eligible for Formula 3, the biofuel it required meant that it did not qualify, relegating the car to a fascinating curiosity.
A push towards biofuel blends and standardised suppliers in many racing leagues helped to remove the competitive advantage that would come from competing fuel suppliers.
It also meant that a single fuel supplier could develop the infrastructure to develop biofuels and have enough knowledge of the cars involved to ensure that the fuel was designed to drop-in specifications.
Ultimately, one major racing league would become the guinea pig, and the choice was both unusual and ideal.
World Rally Biofuel
In late 2020, the FIA started a process of selecting a selectable fuel provider for the World Rally Championship, and by May 2021, they announced that the WRC would be the first major motorsport league where every car was powered by sustainable fossil-free fuels.
Whilst it was in some respects surprising that it was a year earlier than the ethanol-based IndyCar to make the switch, there are a few important reasons for the decision.
The first was the question of speed; unlike IndyCar, which mostly takes place on high-speed oval tracks and the concerns about power density would be more significant, the WRC is much slower, taking place on twisting roads, dirt tracks, snow and dusty sand.
This, combined with the relatively low-speed specifications of the Rally1 cars compared to IndyCar or Formula 1, meant that any power disparity would be difficult if not impossible to notice.
As well as this, the multiple terrain types and cars that more closely resembled consumer models meant that any developments would be directly applicable to other drivers and consumer motoring divisions.
