How Much Fuel Do F1 Cars Hold?
Formula 1 cars are the fastest racing cars in the world, but how much fuel do they use to complete a race? We take a look at how much fuel F1 cars can hold in their tanks and the rules around fuel in F1.
Video Transcript
Formula One cars are the fastest in the world, and as such, they need a lot of fuel to power them round the track for an hour and a half on a Sunday afternoon.
The regulations around fueling and refueling a Formula One car have changed a lot over the years, but how much does a current Formula One car actually hold?
How big is the tank in a Formula One car?
Well, this is something that's guarded very closely in terms of the overall design of the car because at the end of the day, the more neatly you can package your car, the smaller you can make the car, the more aerodynamically efficient it will be, and therefore, the faster it can be during races.
So teams don't really wanna give away their secrets when it comes to the overall fuel that these cars can hold, but there are some regulations that dictate how much fuel a Formula One car can have.
Now, this is one of the things that I need to define before I get too much further into this video.
Now, when you go to the petrol station or the gas station, for the American people that are watching this, or whatever your language's equivalent is of that, you'll get some fuel, whether it's diesel, whether it's petrol, and you'll pay for that based on whether it's gallons or liters, some kind of area of the actual fuel and a volume, an amount that you pay for.
You get a pence per liter, for example, here in the UK, and whereas in the US, I believe you guys pay in dollars per gallon.
But in Formula One it is different because the amount of area, the volume that fuel will take up varies depending in on the temperature.
Now, this is only very slight, but it is very important, especially in a sport as fine-tuned as Formula One is.
So rather than actually measure the fuel that cars are allowed in an area such as liters, they do so with a mass.
The mass of fuel does not change depending on the temperature.
If you've got a certain amount of fuel, you could heat it up to near boiling point.
It will still be the same mass as what it would be as if it was frozen.
So that is what they use.
Now, the amount of fuel that is allowed in Formula One has changed a lot over the years.
Back in the day, there was no limit at all.
You could put as much fuel in the car as you wanted, and in fact, you could refuel between 1994 and 2009 during the races.
But after that, from 2010 onwards, we've had a specific amount that has been allowed.
Now, this amount has deade- steadily decreased over the years as the actual reliance on the ICE, the internal combustion part of the power unit, has actually decreased.
In the V8 era, these were basically normally aspirated engines, so they were 100% powered by the ICE, the actual engine.
We call it power units now though, and these are partly powered by both the ICE and as well as that, other devices such as the control electronics that actually produce electrical power too.
Now, this reliance on the electrical side of things will of course increase for 2026.
It'll be a 50/50 split.
Right now it's around 80/20, 75/25, something like that.
But because of that, the amount of fuel that these cars use has gone down a lot recently, and we can expect it to go down for 2026 onwards.
But for 2025, the season that is coming up now, how much fuel can these cars actually hold?
How big are the fuel tanks?
Well, like I said, there are certain regulations around this, and I believe the current regulation is 110 kilograms is allowed for the start of the race.
It's either 110 or 105.
Now, again, you can start with less fuel than that if you want around certain circuits that have a lower average speed.
For example, let's just say Singapore or Monaco, you'll use l- yeah, less fuel because the average speed is less, and therefore you can actually start with less fuel.
If you start with less fuel, your car will be lighter.
If your car is lighter, you'll be faster.
Around somewhere like Azerbaijan or Monza where there's a lot of long straights and a lot of heavy braking zones, you'll need more fuel.
I believe the worst calendar on the sorry, c- track on the calendar back in the day used to be Sochi, actually, in Russia.
I think that had the highest fuel consumption of any track, but we don't go there for very obvious reasons nowadays.
There are some other, regulations when it comes to the fuel as well.
So you're not allowed to exceed at any point during a Grand Prix, or I believe qualifying as well, a mass fuel flow rate of 100 kilograms per hour.
So what that means is that you can't go over You can't deliver a rate of 100 kilograms an hour per or higher during any point of the Grand Prix weekend, or you will be disqualified for that.
There are actually, instruments that measure that, that the FIA does monitor to make sure no team actually goes over that.
Again, the more fuel that you deliver to the engine, the faster it can go.
That's why there's a limit on that.
And I believe as well, when you start parc ferm, when you actually go into parc ferm If you wanna learn more about parc ferm, I've done a video on that too, but it basically locks you into your setup.
You have to use that same engine setting for the entire race weekend, from qualifying all the way to the race.
You can't You can change it around in practice, for example, but once you actually start the race, once you actually start qualifying, that actually does get locked in, so you can't change that again, making it harder a- to actually go over that, required mass fuel flow rate.
And of course, this is over a very short period of time.
Over an entire race, you will probably the cars will probably burn around, what, 60, 70 kilograms per hour because races last around an hour and a half, maybe longer depending on the track, and therefore on top of that, they will never, o- on an average, go over that.
They can't because they'd run out of fuel, simple as that.
They'd run out of fuel with, like, 10 laps to go.
But it's during any points, at any specific point.
And again, you can test this out with your own road car as well.
If you have telemetry in there, you can actually see how much petrol you are burning, depending on your car's technology and stuff like that.
Formula One cars are a bit more high-tech than that, of course.
But yeah, we don't actually know how much fuel these, these, these engines sorry, these fuel tanks can actually hold because the design's been very closely guarded secrets of the teams.
But roughly speaking, realistically, they can't hold more than 110 kilograms of fuel, so I imagine that would be the actual limit there.
And in real terms, in terms of liters, that is roughly around 110 liters.
Again, that does vary depending on the temperature.
You know, we go from really, really relatively cold places such as Silverstone and Las Vegas to going to really, really hot places such as the Middle East, such as Mexico, Brazil, Singapore.
Because of that, the fuel will actually take up a greater area in a hotter climate rather than in a colder climate.
So again, we don't know exactly, but as the rules dictate, logic dictates that it can't be bigger than that size, and there's no point to it being bigger than that size, again, because it'll take up more space for the car, it'll make it less aerodynamically efficient, it'll make it heavier.
It's effectively wasted space, and there's no such thing as wasted space in Formula One.
If there is, you need to improve the design of your car.
Now, there is a full article on thef1chronicle.com if you guys do wanna check it out, of course, with even more information than what I've given you here.
But that's just a quick crash course on Formula One.
All this information will be out of d- well, date in basically in 12 months' time when the regulations change, and I'll probably do a new video explaining that too.
But the regulations around that have not been specified yet.
I'm sure the teams, as they're developing their engines, will give feedback to the FIA, to Formula One itself and say, "Well, we're expecting this," and from that they will define the rules accordingly.
But yeah, hope that's helpful for you guys.
Hope that's answered your question.
If you wanna see more F1 Explained videos, we've got loads of them here on thef1chronicle.com, so do go over to our playlist on YouTube for that.
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