Race Fuel…bang for your buck?

Race fuel – does it really make a difference? Ever on the quest to cut my racing costs without sacrificing performance I recently took the decision to swap my historic racer from race fuel to pump fuel…

This is for one simple reason, cost. The race fuel comes in at almost three times the price of pump fuel, but, so long as it protected my engine and gave me a performance advantage, I accepted the extra cost. This was my ignorance at play however and once I spoke to a few racing buddies and my engine builder, (Paul at Classic and Modern), I concluded that even if I lost some power from the swap, the cost saving would be so considerable that it made sense. At this point I must stress that my racer runs a B series FIA 1840cc engine and I’m sure a Group C car has no choice but to run on rocket fuel! For me however, pump fuel would work fine.

I took the car down to my old mate Andy at Novatech to first do a run on the race fuel to see what power the car was making. The idea was to then drain the tank, stick some pump fuel in, set up the timing and see what the difference was, if any.

Naturally being racing, the first visit we ran out of time sorting niggling little bits we discovered along the way! The second visit however, was far more plain sailing. On the same day, on the same rolling road, with the same car we concluded that after three runs on each fuel that we lost 1.3hp from race to pump fuel, (If I’d still been running the now illegal 105ron race fuel, it would have been 3hp). In that moment I both rejoiced and kicked myself. Rejoiced for the minimal loss in power, but annoyed I had wasted so much money on race fuel! 1.3hp probably equates to the same as “dropping the kids off at the pool” before the race in terms of power to weight ratio! Nothing then anyone outside of the Formula 1 paddock might notice, certainly not muggins here.

It’s worth pointing out that I did some research into the various pump fuels as well. I went for Shell V whatever it’s called. I based the decision on consistency of product. Apparently theirs has tested better than the other major drillers and supermarket fuels are bought from various sources meaning one lot might be better than another. If Shell happen to read this article by the way, I’d be very happy to receive a load of free fuel coupons from you!

So to conclude. Obviously check with your engine brainiacs, but if they say its okay to run pump fuel and you don’t have the budget of a small nation, running pump fuel is a very good way of saving yourself money with minimum damage to performance.

Words by Will Penrose.

Image – Dale Earnhardt JR’s team hard at work at Darlington Raceway 2008…

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