Fuel
F1 cars use petrol, but since 2026 none of it comes from crude oil. Every team runs on advanced sustainable fuel, made from captured carbon, municipal waste or non-food plant material. Cars start each race with all the fuel they'll use, because refuelling during a race has been banned since 2010.
What makes it sustainable
The FIA's rules for 2026 say the fuel must be made entirely from sustainable sources. That means it has to come from one of these:
- carbon captured from the air, combined with hydrogen to make a synthetic fuel (often called an e-fuel)
- municipal waste
- biomass that isn't a food crop, so nothing grown on land that could be used for food
The production process also has to run on renewable electricity. An independent body certifies each fuel before it's used, and the FIA traces where the ingredients came from rather than letting suppliers offset fossil fuel with credits elsewhere.
It's a "drop-in" fuel, which means it works in a normal petrol engine without modifications. That's the main reason F1 is interested in it: the same kind of fuel could, in theory, be used in existing road cars.
Each team's fuel supplier develops its own blend, so the fuels aren't identical. That makes fuel a small but real performance difference between teams.
How fuel use is limited
From 2014 to 2025, the rules limited fuel by weight: a maximum flow rate in kilograms per hour, and a maximum amount for the whole race (110 kg in the final years).
In 2026 the limit is on energy instead. The engine can't use fuel energy faster than 3,000 megajoules per hour, with a lower limit at low engine speeds. Measuring energy rather than mass makes sense when fuels from different suppliers carry different amounts of energy per kilogram. Each fuel's energy content is certified in advance, and a standard FIA fuel-flow meter on every car checks the rate in real time.
Because nearly half of the car's power now comes from electricity, the cars use much less fuel than the previous generation.
Fuel samples
After a session, the FIA can take samples of fuel from any car and compare them with the reference sample the supplier registered. Cars have to finish a race with enough fuel left in the tank to provide a sample. If there isn't enough, the car can be disqualified. Sebastian Vettel lost his second place at the 2021 Hungarian Grand Prix for exactly this reason.
Fuel saving
Carrying fuel costs lap time, because a heavier car is slower. So teams start with only as much as they think they need, and drivers often have to save some during the race. They do it by lifting off the throttle early before braking zones, called lift and coast, and by using lower engine modes. In 2026, lifting and coasting also recharges the battery, so it serves two purposes. See tyre and energy management.