F1 fuel in a road car?

[Sexual Chocolate]

Daft question but would it work?

[TheRealFingers99]

You'd have to define "work".

Current stuff doesn't seem to be that far removed from pump fuel -- I suspect you'd need a remap to take advantage of any advantage.

In the turbo era it was about as far removed from pu,p fuel as you could conceive.

[GroundEffect]

The fuel in current F1 cars has to conform to a spec that is very close to road car fuel. It would work fine.

[MitchT]

I was under the impression that the stuff they use is pretty standard ... unlike the stuff they were using at the 1990 British Grand Prix, the fumes from which smelt utterly bizarre!

Edited by MitchT on Wednesday 9th July 13:40

[Megaflow]

I had a tour around BAR in the early 00's, and the chap doing the tour said they put some F1 fuel in a road car and it ran fine, slightly more power, but nothing earth shattering. But, it corroded through the fuel lines and plastic tank very quickly.

I'm not sure when they changed to regulations to state the fuel had have the same ingredients as road fuel, but different quantities were permissible, so they above might not be relevant anymore.

[Slyjoe]

When Arrows were running out of cash to pay us, they filled our cars with race fuel. Didn't make a huge amount of difference to be honest.
This was a BMW 318 E36, which I drove like I stole it anyway, more so with "free" fuel.

[belleair302]

Same octane rating as 'pump fuel' but has some of the cleaning chemicals removed to get a better burn. However the fuel bath submitted to the FIA at the start of the season must match the samples taken from the cars at each GP....so no jet fuel as used in the early to mid 90's....ie 105 octane or higher.

[Likes Fast Cars]

And it is a little lighter than your average road car fuel. Better power:weight

[Megaflow]

For really weird fuel, you need to smell some of the stuff they run the 50's Grand Prix Mercedes on... Damn!

[MattOz]

I suspect my 330d would run pretty badly on it!

[CraigyMc]

Megaflow said:

For really weird fuel, you need to smell some of the stuff they run the 50's Grand Prix Mercedes on... Damn!

You still can, at places like the Goodwood revival. Smells like glue, some of it.

[jimbobsimmonds]

There is a video on youtube for Shell V Power, they put the V Power in the F1 car and the F1 fuel in a road car. Both run quite happily on the other, ALonso just noted a slight bit of throttle lag with the road fuel.

[thatdude]

I've read a few articles ehre and there on F1 fuel blends...a couple of decades ago (maybe a few) there was a trend to use toluene as the major component in the fuel, usually in qualifying; the fuel used would corrode the fuel lines. but usually the engine expired before that happened!

[TheRealFingers99]

Probably wasn't the toluene that did it. Shell worked out some magic way of encapsulating water in the fuel........

Pretty good discussion in the A Grahem Bell Forced Induction book -- together with known risks.

[MitchT]

CraigyMc said:

Megaflow said:

For really weird fuel, you need to smell some of the stuff they run the 50's Grand Prix Mercedes on... Damn!

You still can, at places like the Goodwood revival. Smells like glue, some of it.

The stuff they were running cars on at the 1990 British Grand Prix was a bit like that. I'd never smelt anything like it and never did again until I bought some Christmas sellotape one year and noticed a weird smell when I pulled some tape off the roll. On closer inspection it was just like the smell of those 1990 F1 fumes! Needless to say, the roll of tape was 're-purposed'

[Rich_W]

Slyjoe said:

When Arrows were running out of cash to pay us, they filled our cars with race fuel. Didn't make a huge amount of difference to be honest.
This was a BMW 318 E36, which I drove like I stole it anyway, more so with "free" fuel.

I guess you have an "opinion" of Walkinshaw.

[P-Jay]

It was just Shell V-Power for ages wasn't it? Perhaps more carefully standardised for the sake of the FIA.

As for using 'Jet Fuel' that might work in a diesel car, being paraffin (sort of) but it doesn't contain as much energy as pump diesel so it would be pretty st.

If you wanted to run a car on something meant for aircraft you'd want Avgas/Aviation fuel which is meant for piston engines - it would be a slightly more expensive way to 100Ron fuel - it might be of some practical use if you have an older car - some of it still has lead in it - Four Star if you will.

[anonymous-user]

When I've run cars in areas where you cant get decent octane fuel (South Africa for example), I've used a mixture of Avgas and pump fuel.

In the original turbo era, the fuel used was 100% synthetic, BASF blended a mix of mainly toluene, with heptane added to reduce the octane to the FIA limit of 102RON.