“I get quite upset when I see the words ‘gas guzzling’” – Pat Symonds is glad he could drive the introduction of synthetic fuels after initial resistance from F1’s fuel partners.
The power units in cars from 2026 will consist of a small but significant percentage of synthetic, or e-fuels. This is part of Formula 1’s mission to make the sport carbon net-zero by the end of this decade.
This is an important step for #F1. We know for a fact that partners stay out of #F1 for sustainable reasons. A synthetic fuel would help to bring in new industries and partners. The cars cars only generate 0.7% of the total emissions produced by F1, but it is an important step.
— SpomotionAnalytics (@SpomotionA) January 7, 2022
F1 technical director Pat Symonds has been hard at task to make this happen over the past few seasons, but faced resistance from the fuel partners of various teams.
Now that it is set to be introduced, Symonds has thanked the teams and the fuel partners for agreeing to it, and contributing to the sport’s environmental sustainibility mission.
“We had to set some pretty hard targets because we are such a public sport and that’s a bit of a double-edged sword. I get quite upset when I see the words ‘gas guzzling’ right next to Formula 1, and you see it so often in the popular press, when the reality is we’re anything but.
“Environmental sustainability is not just important to Formula 1, it’s important to everyone. We’re not debating climate change anymore, that debate finished many years ago. The debate now is how to ensure that we are contributing to reducing climate change, contributing to technologies that will help our planet.
“When I started this project, probably early or during 2018, I had a bit of a job on my hands trying to persuade some people that this was something that could be done and something that we had to do. I would even say that with some of the oil companies, there was some reluctance.
“But what’s been really enlightening, what’s been really gratifying, is that over the time we’ve been talking about it people have come on board like I can’t believe.
“Now we’re seeing our sponsors, we’re seeing our partners, they want this sustainability story. It’s important to them. And it’s particularly gratifying that we’re seeing the oil companies on board with it as well. As you know, we have a global partner in Aramco [who] are being absolutely instrumental in this programme. That’s the largest oil company in the world who are putting really very considerable resources into a programme like Formula 1.”
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