Sebastian Vettel was clearly having fun during the demo run in the Mansell Williams, but he did so with a clear environmental conscience thanks to an innovative fuel
Sebastian Vettel’s demorun in the 1992 Williams-Renault was one of the emotional highlights of the race Sunday at Silverstone. Nigel Mansell had won his only World Championship title in the FW14B, and the noise the car made gave many fans in the stands goosebumps.
The highlight: Vettel, a campaigner for climate and environmental protection, fuelled the Williams not with petroleum-based petrol but with a CO2-neutral fuel. And this was done without having to modify the engine. True to the motto “Race without Trace”.
Vettel bought the FW14B at auction from Bonhams in 2020. The purchase price was not made public at the time, but a year earlier a car of the same type had been sold for around three million euros.
Because the car is privately owned, Vettel can do whatever he wants with it. But a conversion for use with e-fuels was not necessary at all: “We left everything as it was,” he says in a video on his website sebastianvettel.de. And: “With this technology we are able to keep our history alive. “
Price per litre: 5.95 euros
Vettel bought the CO2-neutral fuel for 5.95 euros per litre from the Berlin-based company P1, which produces in Belgium. He explains, “The price becomes cheaper through more efficient production, which means decentralised production wherever there is an abundance of renewable energy.”
This is because e-fuels are produced with the help of electricity from biomass, for example, and the extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. The catch is that the production process consumes a lot of electricity. Therefore, says Vettel, the energy used must be renewable, for example from “offshore wind farms in Denmark, sunshine in the Sahara or thermal energy in Iceland”.
Combustion engines powered by e-fuels are thus far less efficient than classic electric cars. However, e-fuels are considered a sensible alternative to run millions of used cars in a climate-neutral way in the transition generation. And e-fuels could also be an alternative to fossil fuels in motorsport.
Formula 1 will convert in 2026. Vettel questions why it can’t be done faster: “I’m not the one making the decisions. But we don’t have time to waste. I realise that not everyone agrees to change it earlier. But at the end of the day, that’s what changing it earlier would probably be the right decision. “
Already cheaper than Formula 1 race fuel
Vettel has tried to prove that this could be possible with his demo run. The Renault engine in the Williams FW14B produces an estimated 750 hp – and ran completely smoothly on the CO2-neutral fuel alternative. 5.95 euros per litre is also a price that Formula 1 can afford. The racing petrol currently used is even more expensive.
Simply awesome! ️ Vettel NigelMansell Williams Red5 BritishGP F12022 F1 Formula1 pic. twitter.com/1uFZDrWuD0
– Christian Nimmervoll (@NimmervollF1) July 3, 2022
Vettel’s former team boss Christian Horner is a fan of e-fuels because it could allow spectacular and noisy engines to be used in Formula 1 in the future: “It has to happen, I think. I had goose bumps! People still go to see the Rolling Stones. The sound is part of the DNA of Formula 1, we shouldn’t ignore that.”
For Vettel, the demo run was an emotional experience. Exactly 30 years ago, his FW14B had won at Silverstone with Mansell at the wheel – and it was Mansell who was waiting for him afterwards. “That was very special for me,” says the four-time world champion. “I felt like a five-year-old again. The sound made me feel like I had gone back 30 years in time.”
“The thing proved that we can evoke emotions with the sound, but that it can also be done in a responsible way. That was very important to me. When the idea came up to drive the car here 30 years after Nigel’s victory, I thought about how we could best do that. And I’m very proud that we managed to do it,” said Vettel.
