When F1 Cars Used ROCKET FUEL!

This car produces over 1400 horsepower, largely because it’s running on Rocket Fuel.

Back in the 80s, there were no restrictions on the type of fuel car’s used, so being F1 - the teams took it to the extremes.

They used a formula that created massive power and allowed the turbos to be turned up higher than ever before - but just one catch - it was extremely toxic and is a known carcinogen! Not to mention it’s tendency to cause engines to blow up!

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We all love the genius innovations that came out of F1 in the 80s - ground effect, massive turbos and carbon monocoque chassis’.

The introduction of 1.5 litre turbo engines brought a load of changes in F1, with the most obvious being the huge increase in power. Some of the cars on the grid had as much as 1500 horsepower - they were absolute rocket-ships!.

A big side-effect of the turbos was a massive increase in fuel consumption. The huge turbos pressurise air going into the cylinders, which along with more air - needed more fuel.

At points, the cars were using more than 300 litres of fuel per race! That’s nearly three times what today’s cars are allowed to use.

The teams needed to find a way to use less fuel - they came up with some ingenious, but dangerous solutions - more on that later.

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00:00 When F1 Cars Used Rocket Fuel
00:32 Our Favourite Loop-Hole Finders
00:55 1.2 MPG!
01:25 Fuel Freezing
04:09 Rocket Fuel
05:37 What's Octane?
06:59 Highest Fuel Bill Ever
07:15 Toluene's Biggest Problem
07:33 The End of the Turbo Era
08:45 What Fuel Do Today's F1 Cars Use?

#RocketFuel #Formula1 #Engineering

[Driver]

Who else loves watching these iconic races from the 80s? They bravery of these guys.

*Shameless Plug* - You should follow us on TikTok @official_driver61

[exsappermadman]

1500 Bhp, short run-off area's, driving mostly one handed while changing gear and low levels of legends!....

[Miha_]

Ah yes 1980s. F1 cars with 1400 HP and rally cars with 500-750 HP. What a time to be alive...

[forbiddenera]

I didn't think mixing diesel and paint thinner was so expensive lmao

[TheRacingMonkey]

Very interesting video and beautifully made 👍🏼

[robmidgley]

A lot of errors in here about the fuel, starting with the narrator incorrectly saying ToluLene all the way through. Toluene was used as it has a high volumetric specific energy. The Luftwaffe never used it to any significant degree. This has been repeated often in magazines and elsewhere that the BMW engineers researched old WW2 Luftwaffe fuels to find toluene, but this is a myth. I have researched the old microfiche on Luftwaffe fuels from WW2 and in addition to Nitrous Oxide and Water Methanol injection, they also used aromatic amines combined with tetra ethyl lead as base fuel octane boosters such as aniline and to a much lesser extent meta toluidine - although the latter suffers with poor low temperature solubility which is an issue at altitude). Interestingly the Luftwawwe fuels were almost all ’87 octane right throughout the war with only a small amount of 100 octane available. Allied fuels by comparison ranged up to 115 Octane when using a comparable octane scale (with these fuels having a150 rich mixture ‘octane’ number) . Toluene has not been used in jet engines to any significant degree as the graphic suggests (it is way too volatile and produces too much luminosity and related combustion chamber thermal stress ) and to my knowledge has never been used as a rocket fuel (the gravimetric energy density is too low). Also, like most aromatics it actually has a relatively low flame speed when compared with other gasoline range components (this partially is why the octane is so high), so it is not a rapid burning fuel as claimed here. So toluene was actually used because it is an obvious choice due to the high volumetric energy density (the tank size was limited) and its relatively high volatility (ability to evaporate) and has a high octane number. The penalty is a relatively high fuel mass but was likely simply accepted as an acceptable compromise. I’d also be very surprised to see diesel blended in there (the low flame speed in the charts and slower energy release is simply a feature of toluene combustion). However, the relatively high boiling point of toluene (compared to full spectrum gasoline) would make engine starting a real challenge, so a minor component of something to increase the vapour pressure would be more useful:: ethanol, butane (C4) or iso-pentane (C5) would make sense in this regard while not harming octane too badly. So good video to highlight the use of toluene in F1, but the more ‘interesting’ claims in here would benefit from a bit more research or fuels formulation knowledge.

[crusherbmx]

A couple corrections, DI Angelis died in 1986, not 1985, and his first win was actually in 1982.

[Skulldetta]

San Marino 1985 was de Angelis' second win.

His first win famously came in Austria 1982, where he managed to outdistance Keke Rosberg by just one twentieth of a second.

[SpunzZmoks]

My jaw dropped to the floor in under a minute, then stayed for the rest of the video.

[mrrolandlawrence]

ah yeh the old rear wings that used to snap off on the long straights! in the same way redbull had flimsy droopy front wings, rear wings were made rather flimsy too so they would bend at speed, reducing drag. its why they put weights on the rear wing & test deflection now in scrutinising.

[beeble]

Aside from a couple of experiments, toluene has never been used as a rocket fuel: it's too heavy and the performance increase over kerosene isn't enough to compensate for that. It worked in F1 because their primary concern was volume and because the weight penalty wasn't too bad in an application where the vehicle didn't have to lift its own fuel into the sky. In fact, it may even have been an advantage, given how much effort F1 cars go to to generate more "weight" through downforce. Toluene has also never seen significant use as a jet fuel where, again, weight is the ruling factor. So, interesting video, but based on a number of major misconceptions.

[crusherbmx]

Something that would make this video even more interesting, there actually were rules on fuel types in the 80's, alcohol based fuels were banned, the fuel had to be petrol of some sort, so the teams used fuels that met that definition in only a technical sense, more creative rule reading.

[HighLiner]

Toluene smells like paint thinner because it is thinner. Toluene helps prevent Detonation in Turbo or High compression engines.
Also when trying to mix Methanol and Gasoline Toluene helps same with mixing Methanol and Nitromethane. Also if you wanna get real crazy, Nitro mixed with Hydrazine makes MASSIVE power in Top Fuel drag cars years ago until ATF/FBI put a stop too it
🏎🏁☠

[Katniss]

There's literally no rocket in the world running on toluene.

[FRPlayerOne]

"When you cool something it gets smaller"

Water : Am I a joke to you ?

[the_haunted_outhouse]

You may want to brush up on your aviation/rocket technology.
I know of absolutely no aircraft or rocket systems that use toluene for fuel.

[chemiker]

Toluene was afaik never used as rocket fuel. However, the technique of chilling the fuel down in order to squeeze more of it in a given tank volume, is used in some rockets

[kingsamson]

Paul Rosche, the lead engineer for the development of the BMW M12/13 engine said, that they even tried water injection to cool down the combustion. "We went from 1% to 2%, 4%, 5%, 6%, nothing changed. At 7% we lost power and, clever as we were, figured that water does not burn." Love those anecdotes :D

[roastingminer]

Ive been folowing u since u had only around 10k subs, and damn uve grown and it makes me so happy. Hopefully u success grown even more.

[paulmakinson]

Toxic rocket fuel? For a moment I thought of hydrazine.