To many, the words ‘fuel’ and ‘economy’ have no real place in the motorsports world. After all, and as everyone knows, to save fuel the driver has to be delicate on the throttle, avoid braking and keep in as high a gear as he (or she) can. And with these actions seemingly totally at odds with the concept of travelling quickly, I might find it hard to do anything other than agree.
Nevertheless, there are times when race organisers wish to restrict the amount of fuel carried on board and therefore stipulate a maximum tank capacity to which all competitors must comply. In such cases, in order to finish the race and assuming refuelling is not allowed (or even desirable), it will be necessary to eke out the fuel supply in some way or another. Read more…
As the world awaits the new, expected to be revolutionary, engine rules for Formula One, last winter an altogether much quieter revolution was taking place. For tucked away on pages 56 to 58 - towards the back of the 67-page F1 Technical Regulations document - was Article 19, relating to the fuel used in the formula.
The use of fuels other than gasoline is nothing new in motorsports, yet somehow when teams first make their selection known it always takes us by surprise. So when the Team Aon Ford Focuses of BTCC drivers Tom Chilton and Tom Onslow-Cole finally admitted that they were forsaking the traditional BTCC-spec gasoline and fuelling up on LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) it took some time for the news to sink in.
Maybe I’m getting old but when I see racers the world over spending thousands of pounds (or dollars) on their winter engine rebuilds and then running them on ordinary pump fuels, I simply begin to wonder. By the time they have prepared the car, transported it to the circuit, paid the entry fee and fed and watered their little army of helpers, with any of the budget still remaining, you would have thought that they would have planned to fuel the engine on something just a little bit more suitable than pump fuel? OK, they might have 
I guess you could say that the first decade of the 21st century, in the world of motor sport at least, were the years of the alternative fuels. Diesel (yes, we’re talking motor sports here), bio-ethanol, RME (rape methyl esters) and even CNG (compressed natural gas) have all been used during the decade for one kind of motor racing or another but there was one type of alternative fuel going back to the eighties and which didn’t quite make the headlines, for obvious reasons - and that was toluene. C7H8 to give it its 
Mention the word bioethanol to most people, even the ones who have little interest in our industry, and the chances are they will at least know that you are talking about alternative fuels. Added to gasoline fuel in amounts up to 98% of the total, the process of adding ethanol derived from bio sources to spark ignition fuels can reduce the so-called ‘carbon footprint’ making our sport, or so we try to convince others, more politically acceptable to all. The real benefit to us performance types, as we all probably know by now, is that with higher detonation resistance and richer mixtures 
I think it was the great Liverpool F. C. manager Bill Shankly who once professed that football wasn’t a matter of life and death – it was more important than that. But strangely enough, the words – ‘football’, ‘life’, and ‘oils’ have all come together recently making substantial improvements to gearbox durability especially those with sequential changes.
Love them or hate them, the two-stroke engine is in many ways far superior to its 4-stroke rival.
Today, we are told, is the beginning of the Low Carbon Age. The Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age have come and gone while the Fossil Fuel Age, if you believe many of the pundits, is slowly to be phased out. Ahead of us, or so it would appear, lies the future of maintenance-free electric motors and expensive failing batteries. Setting aside the practicalities of how we actually generate this low carbon electricity, I would just like to point out that even as I write there is one fuel that is low carbon, has a higher calorific value than gasoline / diesel and is literally ‘on tap’ in the vast majority of homes 
The subject of fuel additives is always a thorny subject in motorsport. As a competitor, there are always concerns associated with the ‘unfair’ advantage but if the vehicle is a historic one and designed to run on fuels that are no longer available, then the issues can run even deeper.
