Race Fuel

[Redracer77]

Does anyone know what is the best race fuel you can use that meets the MSA blue book regs. We use V-Power which I think is 98 RON. I take it in CLub Motorsport you can't use the F3 102 RON Sunoco fuel???

What is the limit?

[phoenix]

Current MSA regulations allow 100RON maximum. FIA events allow 102RON

[Redracer77]

Cheers so V-Power or Tesco 99 is as good as you can get that is legal? Unless you paid close to £3 a litre for Sunoco??? Would there be much benefit if any for 1 extra RON?!

[phoenix]

We use Tesco 99 and it is very good. We made that decision based on advice before we read the following, which you might find interesting:

http://www.greenergy.com/motorsport/FAQs.html

[Al Weyman]

Thats interesting, I have used the fuel since it came out and its still under a £1 a litre as I bought a 100 odd litres for the weekends sport. I was also having a conversation at the track on this with a few of the guys and one very well known engine builder had advised one of them to run on Sunoco at what was it, £2.50 a litre. He was running on a 50/50 mix of Tesco and Sunoco. Sevral others were running booster both of which I recon may flout the MSA regs. Others were saying they were just running on Tesco or Optimax and were having no problems and I recon a lot of it was in the heads of those guys using expensive boosters etc. telling me they could feel the difference on the track in which case they are far more sensitive drivers than me because I can't! The bottom line is (IMHO) that the engine builder who ever he may be should build the engine so it does run on an MSA specified fuel, if it won't then he is exposing his customer to possible disqualification and is not on and is doing it just to show his engines making more power and high compression is the simplist way to achieve this, high compression if you go overboard needs special mixes and thats where the rot sets in.

[Notso Swift]

I am presuming that the UK Blue book disallows additives (with a few exceptions), per FIA rules and I am sure that the fuel would be described as commercially available, So boosters should be out. Interestingly, you can’t TECHNICALLY mix fuels either, because that cocktail contravenes the definition of “commercially available”. You would be pretty stiff to get done, but I have seen a sniffer used at an event and the operator was able to identify that a bloke had mixed pump fuel with avgas.

We have covered it before but the advantage in a dedicated motorsport fuel is not due to a point here or there of octane, indeed, even if it were a lower octane it may still be better (like Motorsport fuel vs Avgas). Put most simply these fuels give a bigger bang. They also are engineered to work at higher RPM’s, so will hold a better advance curve. On a restricted turbo car we are talking more than 10% extra power, if tuned right. The RON test is based on a control environment that is irrelevant to modern motors, if you want it exact you can Google it, but of the top of my head it is something like a single cylinder motor, held at 80 C water temp, with 20 C air temp and doing 500 or 800 rpm… My car will not even idle at 800 rpm!

[AU N EGL]

DOnt forget to have your motor tuned for the specific fuel you are using. Just putting the fuel into the tank and expecting your motor to run perfectly is a bit foolish.

[Redracer77]

Originally Posted by phoenix

We use Tesco 99 and it is very good. We made that decision based on advice before we read the following, which you might find interesting:

http://www.greenergy.com/motorsport/FAQs.html

Cheers for the tip. The guy was really helpful. He is really keen for my team to try the new 100 RON MSA reg fuel. He is even driving over to Bolton to drop off a 50l drum tomz!!

[Al Weyman]

The point surely is not if the higher Octane (read bloody expensive, like three times the price) gives more power or bang, of course it will as it means you can run more compression but the trouble is if its allowed in then you HAVE to use it to remain competive where the hell does it get you? Every car on the track going a second or two faster, the same blokes winning but instead of it costing you £20 in fuel a race it cst you £60 so who are the winners, you guessed it, the petroleum companies.

I think road side pump fuels like Tescos at 97p a litre should be adhered to and strongly inforced by the MSA and engines simply built to cope with that level of fuel octane without additives because it made me just a little miffed hearing guys on about running this additive or this expensive fuel as it just totally adds to the cost of an already expensive sport.

[trikesrule]

Well said Al. The speedway team I'm with are now stuck with running that expensive fuel in one of our cars. $4.50 a litre Au because of the crazy compression. I don't pay the bills but I do have to listen to the team owner moaning. Have to admit I wouldn't like to be in our oppositions shoes. We are responsible for driving the costs of racing up locally. I totally agree with most having to run pump gas.........trikes

[Stacy]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

but the trouble is if its allowed in then you HAVE to use it to remain competive where the hell does it get you? Every car on the track going a second or two faster,

Hi Al,

At the last MSA meeting I attended the subject of fuel came up. The trouble with current regulations is that you can legally use 100octane fuel as has been pointed out, and not only that you can run a manganese based additive which will add it up to 102.. So you can legally run 102 octane fuel. I might be a bit hazy on exact numbers here, but you get the picture.

However.

I went through a phase of trying out race fuels. I found that the Sunoco fuel did give a slight increase when the engine was fresh and on the dyno, but when the engine was given some mileage the difference between Sunoco and Optimax was negligible.

I also believe the fuel regulations will be changed by the MSA in the near future to remove this anomoly.

Cheers

Stacy

[Al Weyman]

Thanks for pointing that out Stacy it does seem to be an anomoly, lets hope they do something about it. Surely if they stuck to the old 'Road side pump fuels' criteria it would be far easier for them to test especially if the driver was asked to declare whos fuel it was as that way there would be a bench mark, i.e. data from the manufacturer although I do believe there can be some variance of the fuel rating from batch to batch but then again that could probably be ironed out between a maximum and minimum set of octane ratings for that manufacturers particular fuel.

[Stacy]

Originally Posted by Al Weyman

Surely if they stuck to the old 'Road side pump fuels' criteria it would be far easier for them to test

I think the current problem is mainly caused by the octane rating of what can genuinely be provided even at a roadside pump - for clarity I wasn't using the Sunoco 102 fuel, "just" their MSA compliant fuel. It isn't a great deal cheaper though.

Stacy

[zefarelly]

I was buying sunoco 6rsr which isn't cheap, and mixing it with std unleaded to bring the cost down, and the octane rating etc, car definitely runs better with better octane and a bit of lead !