The man with Formula 1’s future in his hands is Stefano Domenicali.
The idea is to future-proof the sport in a world facing a climate crisis, but also to contribute to solving those issues.
The high-tech hybrid engines currently used in F1 are marvels of technology. They have a thermal efficiency – the measure of the conversion of fuel-energy to power – of more than 50%, when a standard road-car internal combustion engine is around 30%. As Domenicali puts it: “What we achieve today with our engine, no other engine on earth is achieving.”
But F1 has “not done very well” publicising this fact, he says, and must do better when the new engines are introduced.
The 2022 rule changes, aimed at creating a more competitive field, are the first step into what Liberty hopes will be a future in which F1’s global appeal and audience increase. The next is new engines, to be introduced in 2025, which are part of F1’s plan to be carbon neutral by 2030.
F1 is in the process of deciding the technological detail of these new engines – Domenicali picks up two sheaths of documents from his desk to emphasise that it is being worked on as “a priority”. But the general plan is to increase the proportion of electrical energy and introduce fully sustainable fuels, while also keeping costs under control.e
There is no contradiction, he says, between the road-car market heading rapidly towards electrification and F1 concentrating at least for now on hybrid.
“Despite everyone talking about electrification,” he says, “our dimension of hybridisation has a more significant role. Because if you look with a different perspective that is not the pure sporting one, billions of cars around the world today are using, let’s say, normal fuel.
“You cannot pretend to transform the world in the short term on sustainability without giving the chance to all the cars that are there to be still used for the next decades.
“And therefore the answer we are giving to the world with the help of the manufacturers is that, if we can follow sustainable fuels as an answer to sustainability, we are achieving an incredible mission.”
These net-zero carbon e-fuels, as they are known, are not just a potential greener alternative for internal combustion engines while the proportion of electric cars on the roads is still so low.
They could also be invaluable in areas where battery power will not be possible for years, because it lacks sufficient energy density. One key example is aviation, where a battery-powered airliner could not fly, because a battery with sufficient power to move it would be many times too heavy for the plane to be able to take off.
“The credibility comes from the fact that all the people working in this dimension are present in the discussions,” Domenicali says. “So we want to give a real answer to the needs of all the stakeholders that are part of this business.
“That’s why the time needed to find the right solution is not too short. We need to make sure that we can do that assessing all the different needs of the parties involved in the discussion.
“I can guarantee we are involving everyone in this topic in order to find the right solution for the future.”
