Why are people promoting races like F1, NASCAR, etc. when need of the hour is to save fuel?
23 Answers
The absence of F1 cars will have almost no effect on the total fuel consumption of the world because:
a) The total fuel consumed by all the F1 cars in one year is 265,813 litres, which is less than the 273,000 litres of fuel consumed by a jumbo jet on a long distance round trip (Singapore-Zurich-Singapo
b) F1 cars' collective fuel consumption is just 0.0000050898% of the total oil consumption of the world.
Let me explain.
1. The Numbers
There are currently 11 teams in F1 each with two cars, and they are competing in 19 races during one season of racing. Each car averages around 75 litres per 100 km [1]. Lets calculate the fuel used by all the cars together during all 19 races.
The number of laps for each race varies according to the circuit length, to bring the complete race distance to 300 to 310 km. I'll take the upper limit in all cases, so multiplying 310 x 19 = 5890 km per car. Even though it is unheard of, for all 22 cars to complete all 19 races, we shall assume they do, and multiplying 5890 x 22 = 129,580 km covered by all 22 cars in the course of 19 races. Applying the 75 litre/100 km fuel consumption average, the cars collectively consume 97,185 litres for 19 races.
That was easy. Now to the laps they run during Practice and Qualifying sessions. In a perfect weekend, cars will run around 75-80 laps during the three Practice sessions and the three Qualifying sessions. The average circuit length is 5.23 km for this year, so that gives us 80 x 5.23 = 418.4 km per car per race. For 22 cars and 19 races, this becomes 418.4 x 19 x 22 = 174,891 km. Applying the 75 litres/ 100 km rule again, the cars consume 131,168 litres during the practice and qualifying sessions.
Before the first race of the year, the teams get to test their cars during the winter for 12 days. This year, the teams collectively covered 49,947 km during these 12 days[2], which gives us a fuel consumption of 37,460 litres during winter testing.
Add all these three and you get 265,813 litres for the entire year.
Lets compare some numbers from the aviation industry now. A jumbo jet consumes roughly 1300 litres of fuel per 100 km (450 seats times 2.9 litres per person per 100 km[3]). Consider a long distance flight (Singapore-Zurich or Tokyo-New York) that covers roughly 21,000 km for a round trip. If we apply the fuel consumption figure mentioned, that round trip alone uses 273,000 litres of fuel. So out of the millions of people who travel on those flights in a year, if even 900 didn't travel, the fuel saved would be enough to run F1 cars for a whole season. Oh and F1 also provides huge entertainment for more than 4 million people every race[4].
Now for global oil consumption. Using oil barrels as a measure instead of litres (1 barrel = 159 litres), in my calculation that gives me 265,817/159 = 1672 barrels used per season by F1. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates the world will consume 90 million barrels per day[5] which equates to 32,850 million barrels for the whole year. So that means F1 cars' fuel consumption is just 0.0000050898% of the total oil consumption of the world.
Here's another revealing stat: when the Williams F1 Team measured their carbon footprint, they found out that only 0.27% of the total carbon emissions came from their race cars. The main culprit turned out to be electricity, at 59.32% [6]. So what about the Olympics? What about the hundreds of premier league football and cricket matches? What about all hundreds of millions of people who travel by plane for their vacations? What about all the mega music concerts? Everything we do in the name of entertainment or fun consumes a tremendous amount of fuel in one form or the other. Racing cars consume just a drop in that ocean of our indulgence.
2. Innovation
The second reason that I often use to justify the existence of motorsport is innovation. And I mean, real, path-breaking innovations that have taken forward the passenger car industry. I use the term 'innovation' instead of invention because F1 borrowed a lot of stuff from aerospace inventions, applied it to automotive design, and sometimes took a fledgling automotive invention to great heights. Here are the big ones, and it's not about innovations in just fuel or engine technology.
Disc Brakes
Your car stops a lot sooner, and a lot more efficiently, thanks to steel disc brakes that were pioneered by Jaguar for the Le Mans race in 1953[7]. Although disc brakes themselves were invented half a century before that, they were horrendously unreliable, therefore unsafe, and thought of as a failed concept. Modern sports cars now have phenomenal braking power thanks to carbon disc brakes invented by the Brabham F1 Team in 1976, and adapted for road use by Porsche in 1977[8].
Composite Chassis and Body
Carbon fibre is not a motorsport invention - it was adapted from the aeronautical industry. But the fact remains, motorsport was the first to realise the benefit it brought to safety. McLaren invented the carbon fibre 'tub' chassis in 1981 for its F1 car, the MP4/1[9]. These days, composite materials are trickling down to more affordable cars, in the form of carbon fibre body parts, seats, etc. Carbon fibre is extremely light for the strength and stiffness it offers - so you can get a much stronger car with less weight.
Aluminium engine blocks
Far from cast iron blocks which are ridiculously heavy, today's petrol powered road cars have mostly graduated to aluminium, which is much lighter. Lighter the engine, better the fuel efficiency and performance, and consequently, lower emissions.
Tyre compounds
The rubber that connects your car to the road is a lot more advanced than it might appear. Tyre manufacturers in motorsport develop and test different rubber compounds, different design of grooves and different structure of tyre construction and then transfer all those improvements to road car tyre design. The speed of development is manic, and as a result every new generation of tyres grip the road better, offer less rolling resistance, provide better traction in the wet, last much longer and are safer. Pirelli, Bridgestone, Michelin, Goodyear, Avon, Hankook, MRF - pretty much every tyre manufacturer has a motorsport program for this reason.
Hybrid Powertrains & Energy Recovery Systems
Hybrids are not a motorsport invention. However, conventional road car hybrid systems use Ni-Cd batteries that actually cause more damage to the environment in the long run. Also, the power density (the amount of power you get per kg of battery weight) is seriously low. The High Performance Powertrains division of Mercedes-Benz, which makes motorsport engines, took on the challenge, chose Li-ion batteries, and made astounding gains in power density [10]. From a standard power density of 4300 W/kg, they took it to 20,000 W/kg (albeit for pulses lasting for multiple seconds) in less than a year. Even if it was only for for a few seconds,that is a whopping 465% increase. Since the battery was being charged by the energy generated due to braking, the possible benefits for road cars are tremendous.
To Conclude:
The amount of fuel actually used by the racing cars is tiny compared to the amount of fuel that is expended by the millions of fans who travel to the races, and the electrical energy that is used by the millions of viewers to watch the races at home. It is also a fraction of the energy used by the teams themselves, for their offices and factories and what have you. If you take any global sport, this same argument can be applied.
So the difference between a non-motorised sport and motor racing in terms of fuel/energy consumed is the fuel consumed by the cars. And that's less than the fuel used in transporting a few hundred people on a couple of long distance flights. When you also consider the amount of technical advancements F1 produces, especially in terms of safety and energy conservation, I'd say it does make a strong case for itself.
1. The Official F1® Website
2. Testing Stats - The F1 Stat Blog
3. Boeing 747-8 vs. Airbus A380 -- the airline giants face off
4. Will F1's UK audience recover from its 2012 slump?
5. Short-Term Energy Outlook
6. Page on Williamsf1
7. Disc brake
8. Norbert Singer’s nomination for the Greatest Motorsport Innovation
9. McLaren MP4/1
10. Developing Mercedes HPE KERS batteries
EDIT 1: Corrected the final percentage calculation, thanks to Arun Gilda for spotting that one! Cheers. :)
EDIT 2: These calculations were made based on the prevailing regulations. F1's 100 kg fuel consumption limit per race came into effect from the beginning of the 2014 season. If anything that means F1 cars consume considerably less fuel now, than before!
Thanks for the A2A!
a) The total fuel consumed by all the F1 cars in one year is 265,813 litres, which is less than the 273,000 litres of fuel consumed by a jumbo jet on a long distance round trip (Singapore-Zurich-Singapo
b) F1 cars' collective fuel consumption is just 0.0000050898% of the total oil consumption of the world.
Let me explain.
1. The Numbers
There are currently 11 teams in F1 each with two cars, and they are competing in 19 races during one season of racing. Each car averages around 75 litres per 100 km [1]. Lets calculate the fuel used by all the cars together during all 19 races.
The number of laps for each race varies according to the circuit length, to bring the complete race distance to 300 to 310 km. I'll take the upper limit in all cases, so multiplying 310 x 19 = 5890 km per car. Even though it is unheard of, for all 22 cars to complete all 19 races, we shall assume they do, and multiplying 5890 x 22 = 129,580 km covered by all 22 cars in the course of 19 races. Applying the 75 litre/100 km fuel consumption average, the cars collectively consume 97,185 litres for 19 races.
That was easy. Now to the laps they run during Practice and Qualifying sessions. In a perfect weekend, cars will run around 75-80 laps during the three Practice sessions and the three Qualifying sessions. The average circuit length is 5.23 km for this year, so that gives us 80 x 5.23 = 418.4 km per car per race. For 22 cars and 19 races, this becomes 418.4 x 19 x 22 = 174,891 km. Applying the 75 litres/ 100 km rule again, the cars consume 131,168 litres during the practice and qualifying sessions.
Before the first race of the year, the teams get to test their cars during the winter for 12 days. This year, the teams collectively covered 49,947 km during these 12 days[2], which gives us a fuel consumption of 37,460 litres during winter testing.
Add all these three and you get 265,813 litres for the entire year.
Lets compare some numbers from the aviation industry now. A jumbo jet consumes roughly 1300 litres of fuel per 100 km (450 seats times 2.9 litres per person per 100 km[3]). Consider a long distance flight (Singapore-Zurich or Tokyo-New York) that covers roughly 21,000 km for a round trip. If we apply the fuel consumption figure mentioned, that round trip alone uses 273,000 litres of fuel. So out of the millions of people who travel on those flights in a year, if even 900 didn't travel, the fuel saved would be enough to run F1 cars for a whole season. Oh and F1 also provides huge entertainment for more than 4 million people every race[4].
Now for global oil consumption. Using oil barrels as a measure instead of litres (1 barrel = 159 litres), in my calculation that gives me 265,817/159 = 1672 barrels used per season by F1. The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates the world will consume 90 million barrels per day[5] which equates to 32,850 million barrels for the whole year. So that means F1 cars' fuel consumption is just 0.0000050898% of the total oil consumption of the world.
Here's another revealing stat: when the Williams F1 Team measured their carbon footprint, they found out that only 0.27% of the total carbon emissions came from their race cars. The main culprit turned out to be electricity, at 59.32% [6]. So what about the Olympics? What about the hundreds of premier league football and cricket matches? What about all hundreds of millions of people who travel by plane for their vacations? What about all the mega music concerts? Everything we do in the name of entertainment or fun consumes a tremendous amount of fuel in one form or the other. Racing cars consume just a drop in that ocean of our indulgence.
2. Innovation
The second reason that I often use to justify the existence of motorsport is innovation. And I mean, real, path-breaking innovations that have taken forward the passenger car industry. I use the term 'innovation' instead of invention because F1 borrowed a lot of stuff from aerospace inventions, applied it to automotive design, and sometimes took a fledgling automotive invention to great heights. Here are the big ones, and it's not about innovations in just fuel or engine technology.
Disc Brakes
Your car stops a lot sooner, and a lot more efficiently, thanks to steel disc brakes that were pioneered by Jaguar for the Le Mans race in 1953[7]. Although disc brakes themselves were invented half a century before that, they were horrendously unreliable, therefore unsafe, and thought of as a failed concept. Modern sports cars now have phenomenal braking power thanks to carbon disc brakes invented by the Brabham F1 Team in 1976, and adapted for road use by Porsche in 1977[8].
Composite Chassis and Body
Carbon fibre is not a motorsport invention - it was adapted from the aeronautical industry. But the fact remains, motorsport was the first to realise the benefit it brought to safety. McLaren invented the carbon fibre 'tub' chassis in 1981 for its F1 car, the MP4/1[9]. These days, composite materials are trickling down to more affordable cars, in the form of carbon fibre body parts, seats, etc. Carbon fibre is extremely light for the strength and stiffness it offers - so you can get a much stronger car with less weight.
Aluminium engine blocks
Far from cast iron blocks which are ridiculously heavy, today's petrol powered road cars have mostly graduated to aluminium, which is much lighter. Lighter the engine, better the fuel efficiency and performance, and consequently, lower emissions.
Tyre compounds
The rubber that connects your car to the road is a lot more advanced than it might appear. Tyre manufacturers in motorsport develop and test different rubber compounds, different design of grooves and different structure of tyre construction and then transfer all those improvements to road car tyre design. The speed of development is manic, and as a result every new generation of tyres grip the road better, offer less rolling resistance, provide better traction in the wet, last much longer and are safer. Pirelli, Bridgestone, Michelin, Goodyear, Avon, Hankook, MRF - pretty much every tyre manufacturer has a motorsport program for this reason.
Hybrid Powertrains & Energy Recovery Systems
Hybrids are not a motorsport invention. However, conventional road car hybrid systems use Ni-Cd batteries that actually cause more damage to the environment in the long run. Also, the power density (the amount of power you get per kg of battery weight) is seriously low. The High Performance Powertrains division of Mercedes-Benz, which makes motorsport engines, took on the challenge, chose Li-ion batteries, and made astounding gains in power density [10]. From a standard power density of 4300 W/kg, they took it to 20,000 W/kg (albeit for pulses lasting for multiple seconds) in less than a year. Even if it was only for for a few seconds,that is a whopping 465% increase. Since the battery was being charged by the energy generated due to braking, the possible benefits for road cars are tremendous.
To Conclude:
The amount of fuel actually used by the racing cars is tiny compared to the amount of fuel that is expended by the millions of fans who travel to the races, and the electrical energy that is used by the millions of viewers to watch the races at home. It is also a fraction of the energy used by the teams themselves, for their offices and factories and what have you. If you take any global sport, this same argument can be applied.
So the difference between a non-motorised sport and motor racing in terms of fuel/energy consumed is the fuel consumed by the cars. And that's less than the fuel used in transporting a few hundred people on a couple of long distance flights. When you also consider the amount of technical advancements F1 produces, especially in terms of safety and energy conservation, I'd say it does make a strong case for itself.
1. The Official F1® Website
2. Testing Stats - The F1 Stat Blog
3. Boeing 747-8 vs. Airbus A380 -- the airline giants face off
4. Will F1's UK audience recover from its 2012 slump?
5. Short-Term Energy Outlook
6. Page on Williamsf1
7. Disc brake
8. Norbert Singer’s nomination for the Greatest Motorsport Innovation
9. McLaren MP4/1
10. Developing Mercedes HPE KERS batteries
EDIT 1: Corrected the final percentage calculation, thanks to Arun Gilda for spotting that one! Cheers. :)
EDIT 2: These calculations were made based on the prevailing regulations. F1's 100 kg fuel consumption limit per race came into effect from the beginning of the 2014 season. If anything that means F1 cars consume considerably less fuel now, than before!
Thanks for the A2A!
The numbers that have been mentioned already speak for themselves, yes :)
That F1 consumes only 0.000005 % of the world's fuel consumption.
But another very important perspective that deserves a mention is the technology that is developed in F1, LeMans etc. Yes, they consume air grade kerosene and a lot of it, but on the other hand, its the same sport that has developed technologies like Energy Recovery Systems, fuel efficient engines, a hoard of safety technologies like ABS(Anti Lock Braking Systems), better fuel injection systems, paddle gear shifters and above all, all the advancement on the Aerodynamics front.
And most of the mentioned technological innovations and in some cases, breakthroughs, have trickled down to the road cars we have today, hence making road cars so much more efficient. Since road cars consume the largest percentage of the earth's fuel reserve, making them efficient goes a long way in conserving fuel.
So if the need of the hour is to save fuel, invest more in motorsports like F1 because its technologies have been saving you fuel since a very long time. Coupled with the entertainment it provides and the employment it generates, its stance is pretty irrefutable.
That F1 consumes only 0.000005 % of the world's fuel consumption.
But another very important perspective that deserves a mention is the technology that is developed in F1, LeMans etc. Yes, they consume air grade kerosene and a lot of it, but on the other hand, its the same sport that has developed technologies like Energy Recovery Systems, fuel efficient engines, a hoard of safety technologies like ABS(Anti Lock Braking Systems), better fuel injection systems, paddle gear shifters and above all, all the advancement on the Aerodynamics front.
And most of the mentioned technological innovations and in some cases, breakthroughs, have trickled down to the road cars we have today, hence making road cars so much more efficient. Since road cars consume the largest percentage of the earth's fuel reserve, making them efficient goes a long way in conserving fuel.
So if the need of the hour is to save fuel, invest more in motorsports like F1 because its technologies have been saving you fuel since a very long time. Coupled with the entertainment it provides and the employment it generates, its stance is pretty irrefutable.
User and Sundar Shankar have made some brilliant points in their answers. The fuel consumed in Formula 1 is really a very small portion of the total fuel consumed in the world. To put it in perspective, more fuel is probably wasted at traffic intersections by people who keep their engines running. Maybe one of you 2 gentlemen can do some calculations on that.
Some great technologies have come out of Formula 1 that have made our lives better. Many have been covered here earlier, but here's another one: the technology to SAVE BABIES' LIVES. Yes, you read that right!
Formula 1 cars produce large amounts of data every race and F1 race engineers have developed methods for data analysis, pattern recognition and predictive models to improve the performance of their cars. Peter van Manen of Managing Director of McLaren Electronics has applied these systems to ICU units at Birmingham Children's Hospital with real-time analysis that allows them to proactively prevent cardiac arrests.
Here's a link to his recent Ted Talk:
The last lives to be lost in Formula 1 were Aryton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, back in 1994. Since then F1's safety record is far superior to all other forms of motor racing and now they're saving lives instead of losing them. Surely that's worth "wasting" some fuel for.
Some great technologies have come out of Formula 1 that have made our lives better. Many have been covered here earlier, but here's another one: the technology to SAVE BABIES' LIVES. Yes, you read that right!
Formula 1 cars produce large amounts of data every race and F1 race engineers have developed methods for data analysis, pattern recognition and predictive models to improve the performance of their cars. Peter van Manen of Managing Director of McLaren Electronics has applied these systems to ICU units at Birmingham Children's Hospital with real-time analysis that allows them to proactively prevent cardiac arrests.
Here's a link to his recent Ted Talk:
The last lives to be lost in Formula 1 were Aryton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger, back in 1994. Since then F1's safety record is far superior to all other forms of motor racing and now they're saving lives instead of losing them. Surely that's worth "wasting" some fuel for.
I make my living photographing Grand Prix motorcycle racing, which is basically Formula 1 but with motorcycles instead of cars. I also follow F1, though not NASCAR. I agree with much of what has been said here about innovation and the off-track benefits of the technology developed in F1.
Answers so far have focussed on the fuel consumption of the racing cars themselves. But the on-track fuel consumption is insignificant compared to the fuel consumed transporting the F1 show from location to location.
There are currently 19 F1 rounds in as many countries. I know from my experience in MotoGP that an enormous amount of equipment and a huge number of people must travel from each race to the next. There are jet liners for the teams' equipment (the cars or motorcycles, tools, garage panels, computers, chairs, desks, etc etc--everything you see on TV in the pit lane and garages goes from race to race), TV equipment (cameras, stands, kilometers of cable, computers, antennas, and more than I can list or even know about), hospitality gear (everyone there has to eat), equipment for the many VIP guest facilities (it's branded consistently with the F1 or MotoGP logos etc, so it comes from race to race), signage to mount on track barriers and materials to paint sponsor logos around the track... It goes on and on and on.
Occasionally the schedule allows people and things to move over the road in trucks, such as between the rounds in Spain and Monaco. But the rest of the time those fleets of trucks are loaded up, driven to the nearest airport, unloaded onto jet liners, which then fly long distances to bring the show to the worldwide audience. Australia to Malaysia, from there to China, then to Bahrain, then to Spain. From Europe to Canada, then back to the U.K. You get the idea. Along with the equipment, many hundreds of team members, media people, sponsors, vendors, etc etc occupy seats on passenger jets.
Once the equipment and personnel arrive, fleets of cars and more trucks are rented to get everything and everybody from the airport to the track, then each day from the hotels to the track and back, then finally back to the airport to move on to the next race location. While many teams ask their people to share rental cars, each official parking lot at a MotoGP race is packed with credentialed cars, and being so much larger, F1 must be even worse in terms of the number of personal vehicles used and fuel consumed off track.
While most members of a weekend's race audience watch from home, attendance for F1, MotoGP and NASCAR race weekends can easily be 100,000+ people. These folks generally don't walk or ride bicycles to the race each day, they come in cars.
So by now you can see why on-track fuel consumption is, as pointed out several times in this thread, insignificant. But on-track fuel consumption also represents a tiny amount of the fuel/pollution generated by each event in a given international series.
I love racing and I love my job, but one of the things I wish were different is how we approach the role international motor sports will fit into a world increasingly concerned about fuel consumption. When we consider the ecological effects of motor sports, let's make sure we take everything into account.
Answers so far have focussed on the fuel consumption of the racing cars themselves. But the on-track fuel consumption is insignificant compared to the fuel consumed transporting the F1 show from location to location.
There are currently 19 F1 rounds in as many countries. I know from my experience in MotoGP that an enormous amount of equipment and a huge number of people must travel from each race to the next. There are jet liners for the teams' equipment (the cars or motorcycles, tools, garage panels, computers, chairs, desks, etc etc--everything you see on TV in the pit lane and garages goes from race to race), TV equipment (cameras, stands, kilometers of cable, computers, antennas, and more than I can list or even know about), hospitality gear (everyone there has to eat), equipment for the many VIP guest facilities (it's branded consistently with the F1 or MotoGP logos etc, so it comes from race to race), signage to mount on track barriers and materials to paint sponsor logos around the track... It goes on and on and on.
Occasionally the schedule allows people and things to move over the road in trucks, such as between the rounds in Spain and Monaco. But the rest of the time those fleets of trucks are loaded up, driven to the nearest airport, unloaded onto jet liners, which then fly long distances to bring the show to the worldwide audience. Australia to Malaysia, from there to China, then to Bahrain, then to Spain. From Europe to Canada, then back to the U.K. You get the idea. Along with the equipment, many hundreds of team members, media people, sponsors, vendors, etc etc occupy seats on passenger jets.
Once the equipment and personnel arrive, fleets of cars and more trucks are rented to get everything and everybody from the airport to the track, then each day from the hotels to the track and back, then finally back to the airport to move on to the next race location. While many teams ask their people to share rental cars, each official parking lot at a MotoGP race is packed with credentialed cars, and being so much larger, F1 must be even worse in terms of the number of personal vehicles used and fuel consumed off track.
While most members of a weekend's race audience watch from home, attendance for F1, MotoGP and NASCAR race weekends can easily be 100,000+ people. These folks generally don't walk or ride bicycles to the race each day, they come in cars.
So by now you can see why on-track fuel consumption is, as pointed out several times in this thread, insignificant. But on-track fuel consumption also represents a tiny amount of the fuel/pollution generated by each event in a given international series.
I love racing and I love my job, but one of the things I wish were different is how we approach the role international motor sports will fit into a world increasingly concerned about fuel consumption. When we consider the ecological effects of motor sports, let's make sure we take everything into account.
A very comprehensive answer by Sundar Shankar :
Sundar Shankar's answer to Why are people promoting races like F1, NASCAR, etc. when need of the hour is to save fuel?
Sundar Shankar's answer to Why are people promoting races like F1, NASCAR, etc. when need of the hour is to save fuel?
