Petrol Companies in F1

[Racer-X]

Petronas? Due to the sponsorship
Petrobras? Due to the long experience they have with them
CASTROL(BP)? Due to the Commercial relationship between Castrol and BMW.

[DaveKillens]

Don't forget Shell, who have their logo on the red cars.
There are many petroleum companies who have been involved in racing. It's only logical that companies that cater to the auto industry to be involved in racing.
My favorite was the Gulf Porsches.

[riff_raff]

Having separate fuel suppliers, or "sponsors", in F1 is a bad idea. It only serves to drive up the cost of racing. Each engine manufacturer must map their engines to run on these custom brewed race fuels. The fuels are extremely expensive to produce in the small quantities required. And since they are formulated specifically for a particular F1 engine, they have no benefit for the fuel company's commercial products.

A better approach would be to have a single fuel supplier, like NASCAR, or to use a fuel that has a fixed composition, like methanol in Champ Cars. This would lower the cost of racing and make for a more competitive racing series.

The same thing goes for chassis. F1 needs to get rid of that ridiculous rule that requires each team to construct its own chassis. They all look the same now anyway, so why not allow teams to buy their chassis?

[Guest]

Bemvindo X-Racer (a little message in portuguese for the new portuguese member)

Now getting dorn to your question, you have to diferenciate from oil and fuel, so the teams are being supplied as follows:

(team - fuel - oil)
-Ferrari - Shell - Shell
-Williams - Petrobras - Castrol
-Mclaren - Mobil - Mobil
-Renault - Elf - Elf
-BAR - Nisseki - Nisseki (don't know where this one's from but I suspect japan probably a Honda technical partner)
-Jordan - Elf - Lubrax
-Sauber - Shell* - Petronas - they have been testing petronas fuel since mid 2003, don't know if they are in fact using it at races.
-Jaguar - Petroscience - Castrol
-Minardi - Elf - Elf
-Toyota - Esso - Esso.

**- not too sure about Jaguar fuel supplier, but according to what I have here at home...

Fuel and oil caracteristics is very important in terms of engine performance, the viscocity of the oil will reduce friction and this means that there aren't alot of losses due to friction. Fuel is also importante cause of the "explosion factor" the more energentic the explosion is the more power you get. So fuel and oil development is a very sighnificant part of engine power.

For example Renault had a 4% power gain this year at the Hungaroring due to a new oil, basicly what the try to do with oils is to mantain the oil heat tolerance and reduce its viscocity.

Viscocity is the internal force that a fluid has, that tends to slow the motion of the fluid, generally we call it friction....but in a fluid it's called viscosity.

PS-wish me luck for my fluid mechanics exam....it's today as 7PM

Does anybody know which fuel & lubes supplier will be with the F1 Teams in 2006?

Ferrari - Shell
Renault - ELF
McLaren - Mobil
Toyota - Esso
Williams - Petrobras + Castrol (?)
Honda - ?
BMW - Petronas(?) BP Castrol (?) Petrobras (?)
RedBull - Shell(?)
ToroRosso - (?)
Midland - (?)
Super Aguri - (?)

[DaveKillens]

Riff raff, I agree 100% with your post.

[jezzwa]

i don't know team who would want Exxon-Mobil oil, its all been washed up on Alaska's beaches

[Guest]

BMW is sponsered by Petronas, so the feul and oil will by from petronas. I think tis is the most logoc. And for Williams Petrobas and Castrol are stil officials suppliers.

[Mikey_s]

Riff Raff,

for what it's worth my 2 cents on the issue; As with other areas I think the involvement of oil companies in the sport can be distinguished on the basis of whether they are technical sponsors (i.e. supplying technical know how... and cash), or simply commercial sponsors = just cash for sticker space.

I know that Shell work very closely with Ferrari on fuel and lubricant development and this has shown benefits in practical terms in terms of giving them the ability to optimise pit stop strategy by having a perfectly matched fuel, not only for the engine, but also for each circuit (you need different characteristics at Monaco than Monza). If you want to go for a fixed fuel for all teams then presumably you do the same for the lubricants, the logical extension is to standardise everything else as well - suddenly it isn't F1 any more. Furthermore, the teams would lose a lot of money in terms of sponsorship and the technical sponsors dissappear from the sport.

Petronas is a commercial sponsor - the fuel (and probably the lubes) are supplied by Shell - coz they know what the engine likes.... but the main difference is that Sauber had to pay for the fuel and lubes, whereas Ferrari were paid to use them (and got thousands of hours of laboratory development work for free)!!!

It's a funny old world!

[Spencifer_Murphy]

with regards to what riff raff said...I must agree that fuel is very expensive in F1....if max Wants to cut costs...why not find a single fuel supplier?! He's done it with Tyres and its bound to reduce costs. (single fuel, monitored by FIA all teams map engines to same fuel type) and also if FIA wnted to limit costs further they could limit the amount of times the fuel is "upgraded" throughout the season. This would also lower R&D costs for teams at test sessions.

[Mikey_s]

Spencifer,

I'm not convinced that this will save a meaningful amount of money - I have no clue regarding the actual amounts of money involved, but I suspect that this will not make a big difference. Fuels testing can be carried out on the dyno - they do not need to go testing at external venues.

Secondly, in all likelihood the technical sponsors bear the cost of fuel development - so for the teams this is likely to have nominal impact. Those teams without an oil company as a technical sponsor purchase the fuel anyhow, it could then be argued that your proposal therefore increases costs as the other teams will now have to purchase fuel which is presently supplied free.... (and then they would have to do lots of bench tests to map their engines to the standard!!)

It also gets back to how standard do you want to make the sport... I started a thread in General Chat on rules and regs - I think continual confinement in the regs hurts the sport, just my view.

... and your technical sponsors will leave the sport, or simply buy sticker space on the cars - loss of revenue to the sport and a kind of cost increase accordingly.

[Spencifer_Murphy]

Very true...

...Still a single fuel supplier will cut costs better than Mosley's infernal V8's!

Also I do agree whole heartedly that the sport suffers from the confinement that the rules pose. (But single fuel supplier is better than the CDG Wing )

[manchild]

http://www.liquidcosworth.com/