Audi and BP evaluated 70 components and tested 200 blends before the 2026 debut. The search for the balance between performance and reliability is "brutal" but the advances could reach street cars in the future.
While the spotlights point at the drivers and the battle on track, Formula 1 wages another silent but equally fierce war: that of the development of advanced sustainable fuels. The 2026 season not only brought new cars and power units but also a pioneering technology that the teams and their technology partners have spent months perfecting, the goal is twofold: to maximize performance and reliability and to lay the foundations so that these advances one day reach street vehicles.
The story of these fuels is that of a major challenge, before 2026 Formula 1 already boasted of having the most efficient engines on the planet, with hybrid units that used 10% bioethanol, but the new regulations raised the bar. The FIA demanded advanced sustainable fuels manufactured from sources such as carbon capture, municipal waste and non-food biomass. These fuels known as "drop-in", are designed to replace fossil fuels without the need to modify the engines, which in theory allows their use in production cars.
The process of finding the perfect blend has been titanic. Audi in collaboration with its technology partner BP evaluated 70 fuel components and developed 400 pilot samples before the start of the season. In total 200 blends were tested in the new German power unit and 240,000 liters of test fuel were delivered to the Neuburg factory. Luc Jolly, head of motorsport technology fluids at BP, summarizes the magnitude of the challenge: "Audi is a new team with a new power unit and a new regulation, plus there is the requirement of advanced sustainable fuels. We had to start from scratch to discover what worked well in the Audi engine and once we knew that, how to do it sustainably and approved by the FIA".
The balance between performance and reliability is in Jolly's words, "brutal": "F1 is the pinnacle of motorsport and engineering and in any engineering project there is a compromise between performance and the reliability margin that we must leave. The competition is absolutely brutal, everyone has talented people but we are on that journey and we believe that this year we are building very solid foundations" he explains.
Gabriel Bortoleto, Audi driver, brings the human perspective to this process: "I grew up driving, driving and driving, evolving my technique but when you get to F1, it's a completely different world. Everything is about innovation, about bringing improvements to the car, to the engine, to the fuel. My part is to give feedback when I get in the car and then that information goes through the corresponding areas" notes the Brazilian.
Looking to the future, Jolly sees an enormous margin for development: "There is always room to keep developing. In the first year of a regulatory cycle, it's a race to bring improvements and more performance, nobody would be in a position to think that there is no more performance to extract" he states. Furthermore the adjustment of the regulations for 2027 with a greater fuel flow to rebalance combustion power against electric, will open new opportunities: "It's much more complicated than simply putting in more fuel, it really alters the dynamics inside the engine" he warns.
The potential impact of these advances goes beyond the track. BP shares the learnings of its F1 team with the development of its street fuels: "We are considering what part of what we do in the team dedicated to F1 could benefit road fuel customers. It's a journey we are embarked on" Jolly concludes.
Formula 1, a laboratory of innovation, could be designing the future of the energy that moves the world.
