What’s the deal with Formula 1 and sustainable fuels?

When Formula 1 cars take to the track for the first time in 2026, they'll do so powered by carbon-neutral synthetic fuels, part of the sport's "net zero by 2030" plan. It's a laudable goal, but, I confess, one I've sometimes questioned. After all, most of the carbon emitted during the course of an F1 weekend comes from the same sources as any other popular sport—the teams and fans traveling to and from the event. But after speaking with Pat Symonds, Formula 1's chief technical officer, I may have been missing the forest for the trees.

"In essence, yes, you're quite right. The total carbon footprint of the sport—of scope 1, 2—is just over a quarter million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, and the cars on the circuit represent 0.7 percent of that," Symonds explained to me. "So yes, your premise is true. But we try and take a much wider view. And what I think we have in developing a sustainable fuel and putting it in our race cars is an enormous multiplier effect. The 2 billion vehicles that are out there could use this fuel, and then the 400,000 people driving to [the US Grand Prix] isn't a problem," he said.

Formula 1 has changed quite a bit in the years since Liberty Media bought it at the end of 2016 with bigger ideas than simply sucking revenue out. Instead of pretending the Internet never happened, you can now watch races via F1's own streaming service, a service that has markedly improved over the past couple of years. In the US, a move to ESPN saw the sport go commercial-free during the actual races. And, of course, there's the whole Drive to Survive phenomena, which has boosted audiences worldwide—but particularly in North America, which next year will host grands prix in Austin, Texas; Miami; and Las Vegas.

Pat Symonds (right) has had a long career in Formula 1 as an engineer and aerodynamicist. In the late 1990s, he was Michael Schumacher's (middle) race engineer, under the technical direction of Ross Brawn (left), who is now F1's managing director of motorsports.

Credit: Pascal Rondeau/Getty Images

The changes have affected more than just the sport's popularity and reach, too. The racing has improved thanks to a new generation of cars (and an awful lot of EC2 time) that generate their aerodynamic grip via ground effect, and the sport is generally more competitive now that budgets have been reined in via a cost cap. And F1 now cares about more than just financial sustainability, hence the 2030 target.

"We're not doing it because we think we should, we're doing it because we know we need to. And we believe that over the years Formula 1 time and time again has shown how application of technology does rattle down to society," Symonds said.

"Whether it's intentional or not; you know, occasionally we do things that are intentional. I'm sure you're aware of the ventilator project that we worked on during COVID. But other times, it is because motorsport is about efficiency; the marginal gains that you get come from efficiency. So we continually strive for efficiency. And these days, [it's] because efficiency is an integral part of carbon reduction, right? The less fuel you're using, the less carbon you put out. The better your production methods, the less carbon you put out," he told me.

Still, wouldn't it be easier to leave that kind of technology transfer to endurance racing and sports cars and just have F1 teams build the very fastest single-seat race cars?

"Of course it would be easier, but it's not the right thing to do; you have to have responsibility," Symonds told me. "And I think we're all quite proud of the fact that our technology does rattle down. We have a little internal sort of strap-line, and we don't want any of our fans to be ashamed of being Formula 1 fans. And that's really, really important. Our fans are our customers, and our product is a Formula One race. So we want the fans to come to that, we want them to be proud to come to it, and in order to do that, we have to, irrespective of anything else, we have to acknowledge the role of sustainability," he said.

Fuel companies want to partner with F1 teams for the exposure, but also because it's a high-pressure test environment.

Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

With an entirely synthetic fuel, there might perhaps have been a temptation to get creative with the chemistry and engineer something with as much energy density as possible. "And that was my idea to start with. But actually, as we started working with the oil companies, they said, "well, no, really what we'd like to do is we would like to prove that we can synthesize a fuel that can be used in any vehicle," Symonds said.

So instead of a special blend for F1 cars and maybe some seven-figure hypercars, Symonds said that "we want something that we can genuinely say 'this drops into any vehicle; so in actual fact the fuel we're producing is actually closer to that in a road vehicle than it is to that in the current racing vehicle. It's still a reasonably high-performance field, it's a higher octane fuel than you buy at the pump, but that absolutely, it can be used in any vehicle."

Perhaps the best-publicized of these efforts is the one that Porsche is involved in. Together with Siemens and ExxonMobil, Porsche has invested in a synthetic fuel plant in Punta Arenas, Chile. Captured CO₂ from the air and hydrogen generated via electrolysis powered by wind turbines are used to synthesize methanol, which in turn is made into longer hydrocarbons using a methanol-to-gasoline process. The project is in its pilot stage now but plans to scale up to 14.5 million gallons (55 million L) by 2024 and 145 million gallons (550 million L) by 2026; long-term plans call for 12 such plants, each capturing 2 million metric tons of CO₂ a year.

F1 cars already use a third less fuel than before the introduction of hybrid powertrains in 2014, but that efficiency is set to increase.

Credit: Hasan Bratic/DeFodi Images via Getty Images

But it's not the only effort underway. "For example, Aramco are building two sustainable fuel plants at the moment; one's in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; the other is in Bilbao in Spain. I know we're going to see a huge uptake of these things—they don't happen overnight. They're not, at this stage, anything like the size of the fossil fuel refineries, but they're way beyond the sort of laboratory stage. They're in pre-production."

"And from the meetings we have had with the fuel companies over the last couple of years, we know that everyone is going along these lines, and I think we'll see an awful lot of these pilot plants appearing," Symonds explained to me. (The Aramco plants are scheduled to come on-line in 2023.)

The prospect of F1 helping develop a drop-in carbon-neutral replacement for gasoline that would extend the lives of the billions of vehicles already on the road without worsening climate change is obviously appealing, but it's also not the only thing F1 is doing to make its cars more sustainable.

The cars will continue to get more efficient, using 75–80 kg of fuel per race compared to the 100 kg in 2022 or 160 kg in 2012. But the sport also wants teams to start thinking more seriously about recycling things like carbon fiber, as well as moving to natural fibers and non-hydrocarbon-derived resins for composite parts or tooling where the ultimate performance of carbon fiber isn't necessary.

Similarly, the sport wants teams to be more mindful about the use of high-nickel steel in hybrid components. "We're not saying that they have to use recycled materials in the build of these machines but are going to say that they have to certify that, at end of life, that nickel is recycled," Symonds said.

Heating F1 tires before they're used in a race has been a significant source of power consumption at the track. That's set to change.

Credit: Hoch Zwei/Corbis via Getty Images

Other changes will be using fewer tires during a race weekend, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Pirelli experiment with natural products in its racing tires, similar to a recent experiment by Firestone and IndyCar using rubber from the guayule plant. The team is also facing new restrictions on the use of electric tire blankets to preheat tires.