In a nutshell: Why Formula 1 will return to pure petrol power

Formula 1 boss Stefano Domenicali’s rant in that interview last week raised some most interesting points around the series’ power units. No, let’s just go back to calling them engines. Because that’s the future.

In order to justify my views, allow me to unload the latter half of my bio in a way that also tells the whole story. Thirty years ago I flipped from being a race driver, preparer and tuner to the motoring media. I started a little magazine called Cars in Action, which took us on an incredible journey. Back then Michael Schumacher was rattling off his five magnificent Ferrari titles in perhaps the best F1 cars of all time. The V10 era.

Interestingly it was just after the launch of the BMW M6 V10 at Ascari in early 2005 that the world fell on its head. I remember clear as day chatting to BMW M boss Dr. Friedrich Nitschke that night at the villa about that superb V10. He seemed unperturbed about its quite skewed 357 g/km emissions. We laughed when I told him that my daily ride M5 back then would be lucky to see 500. It seemed impossible to beat 20 l/100 km.

Anyway, no sooner had we touched down back in sunny South Africa than news broke of draconian new Euro 5 emissions standards that would come into place in 2009. That was like a switch. Almost overnight, the focus switched from brake horsepower per litre to that thing I just mentioned. Grams per kilometre. Euro 5 severely limited particulate limits in both diesel and direct-injection gasoline engines.

Now the whole green thing had already been going on for seven or eight years. Wherever we travelled, whatever we drove, there was always a side of green. But it became crazy as soon as Euro 5 popped up. Having access to all that green info, once a year, we’d run a Green Edition, exploring all the new tech, from hybrids, to plug ins, EVs to fuel cells, hydrogen combustion, the lot.

They never quite flew off the shelf, but our Green Editions were a huge success, selling green articles to carmakers was like clubbing seals. They couldn’t get enough of it. Our magazines were also among the first to list grams per kilo in all our data anywhere in the world. Way before any of our local rival titles ever even thought of doing so. But it puzzled us that Green Editions just never sold. No matter how good the bottom line.

We also ramped up our efforts in the Total Economy Run, which we’d time our Green Editions to coincide with. I won them in petrols and diesel, on overall least fuel used and on index. We even drove one of our Citroens 1300 km to Durban and back on a tank. Or 41 litres of diesel. So to say that we lived the green life and rode the green wave, would be an understatement of note. Alongside out regular petrol head work, of course.

The green lobby grew and in 2014, along with Formula E, the current Euro 6 standards arrived. Which led to one of the motor trade’s biggest scandals. Dieselgate. When Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and others tried to cheat their emissions, and as our Stefano relates in his interview.

“I was Audi CEO at that time,” Domenicali owned up. “It’s impressive how quickly the landscape of the manufacturers changed after Dieselgate.”

Dieselgate changed everything. Worst of all, it gave credence to the lunatic green fringe, that the future should be electric. Carmakers en masse bought into that nonsense and before we knew it, the whole world had gone mad. It was around then that Formula 1 adopted its first hybrid rules set. Personally, however, my views shifted 180 degrees on popular opinion.

Why? Well, closing on 20 years later, there was nothing new. EVs were still glorified milk trolleys and their supporters simply ignored the reality of a global electric vehicle shift. Where we live in South Africa, for instance, EV take-up is still well under one percent. We simply don’t have the infrastructure. Sure, Norway, and others prove it can be done, but those are exceptions.

Roll on a few years and we had a teenage delinquent leading world trends. I mean WTF, Greta Thunberg? Really? Through all of that we still drove tested and learned about all the EVs. Up to the most recent one a few weeks back. They have just never worked for us. But the lunatic fringe was still not quite done. In September 2020, Governor Gavin Newsom legislated the phase-out of new gasoline cars in California by 2035.

The Advanced Clean Cars II regulation was approved on 22 August 2022. Astoundingly, the very next day a heatwave prompted California officials to request folk stop charging EVs because the power network could not handle the strain! A few months later in early 2023, the EU formally adopted Euro 7 legislation, effectively banning the sale of new internal combustion vehicles, including hybrids by 2035.

Off which the automotive world totally went on tilt. Everyone was designing EVs from the Dodge Charger to the Ford Lightning to the entire Alfa Romeo, Volvo and Jaguar ranges, sinful as it all seemed. Porsche was on an EV charge too, as was Ferrari and the rest.

This also came up in the Domenicali interview: "It is true at that time there was a clear indication from all the manufacturers that either we go in the direction of electrification, or they would not be interested.”

The world was also in the grip of the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) bans when Formula 1 put its current and so far disastrous 50-50 petrol-electric 2026 rules set together. And as a collective, we blundered headlong into the dreaded electric era. I despised it, writing whatever I could, whenever I could in an effort to quell the storm. Even worse, a similar set of circumstances obliterated magazines and today here we sit, typing into cyberspace.

Seems I’m not alone. The market stood firm. In spite of incredible incentives, EV sales went nowhere. If anything, the kneejerk that started with Dieselgate, was spurned by the likes of Thunberg and carried out like loyal little worker bees by the entire auto industry, fell flat. If the ICE ban was to achieve anything, it was imminently clear, that would be to kill the Auto industry itself.

Before we knew it, the Dodge Charger was a V8, the Ford Lighting and so many more EV pipe dreams just a nightmare memory. To the extent that Ford CEO Jim Farley admitted the Lightning could have been a success.

“Yeah, at ten grand off and with V8 power, maybe,” he admitted. Yip, the lunatic fringe continues to believe EVs were the answer.

But the world took no notice, while legislators came under extreme pressure from the realists who actually make the world go round. Then President Donald Trump repealed California’s anti-ICE ACC II standards in June 2025, before the red faced EU turned tail on its 2035 ICE ban. Concentrating on an overall emissions reduction plan instead.

Through all of that, F1 and the FIA diligently ignored warnings that its new 50-50 petrol-electric plan from 2026 on, made no sense. Since when the racing has proven exactly that. And now the world now waits in limbo to learn the outcome. Don’t expect any major changes anytime soon. Some Elastoplast, perhaps. Where a prosthesis or a transplant would normally do the job. Live with it, we will.

The medium to long-term outlook is perhaps a little different. One thing the new regulations have done right, is to introduce sustainable, or e-fuels. There are several varieties of so-called CO₂-neutral electro-fuels including solar, wind, or hydro renewables to green hydrogen and synthetics.

The current buzz word is however carbon capture e-fuel. Where carbon dioxide is recaptured from the atmosphere and turned back into petrol, diesel, jet fuel or whatever; sort of second hand fuel made from atmospheric carbon. Which actually makes it carbon neutral. And enables us to just continue driving combustion engines just as they are, without any worry of killing planet earth. So simple it’s beautiful.

Formula 1 already runs the ICE aspect of its 50-50 hybrids on carbon capture e-fuel as of the beginning of 2026. Which critically means it is also already carbon neutral. So why bother with hybrid or electric at all?

Stefano Domenicali knows this full well, he said: “It is clear that electrification has shifted versus hybridisation. Everyone understands that if sustainable fuel will be there in terms of quantity with the right pricing, it would be the way to realistically tackle emissions.

“It is also clear that we no longer need to be in a corner where we are so dependent on the manufacturers. Yes, the manufacturers are a vital piece of what we are doing and we need to thank them every day and every night because without them it would be impossible.

"But we cannot allow manufacturers to dictate the pace to the sport. That's a lesson learned (in the current 50-50 regulations) that I will enable us, with the FIA, to find the right package, because we want the manufacturers to be in, with no doubt.

"It's of course up to the FIA to propose that, a sort of sustainable fuel for sure at the centre of the future. With a different balance of what could be the electrification with a strong internal combustion engine. Because that's motorsport. It will allow to save a lot of kilos, to have pure racing in that respect, in terms of a lighter car, smaller cars that you can really push as much as you can."

So, cutting a long story short, Formula 1 did its utmost to cater for a world that changed faster than the sport could possibly react, to find itself with a rules set, that, well, just does not seem to work.

Reading between the lines, Formula 1, the FIA and we do seem to concur on the future solution.

In our minds, that would be a carbon neutral e-fuelled 4-litre (any amount of cylinders will do) naturally aspirated engine in a far smaller, much lighter chassis with a little battery and electric motor-generator to run at pit lane speed limit for a couple of hundred metres, whenever they need to stop.

If you ever heard or saw a 3.5-litre Formula 1 Grand Prix, you’d immediately understand why. And all carbon neutral too!