Why F1 Refuelling Is Necessary for the FIA’s Target of 80kg+ Lighter Cars

Even though Formula One has been through its biggest regulatory change since the inception of the sport in 1950, it’s a damning indictment of the new engines that the FIA is continually debating in public the next set of changes for 2031.

It’s further indicative that the FIA felt backed into a corner over the 2026 regulations by the sport’s desperate push to bring on board more manufacturers. In doing so, many compromises were made which the FIA now clearly regrets.

The FIA’s head of day-to-day F1 operations, Nikolas Tombazis, recently admitted that the FIA wanted a more sophisticated method of analysing which of the new power units was the most powerful, but was forced by the manufacturers to merely checking the power of the internal combustion engines.

After the debacle at the season opener in Melbourne, the FIA president came out to reassure fans that the next cycle of F1 power will be “V8 engines, with very, very little electrification”. The obsession for the 2026 rule set was driven by the manufacturers’ wish to have powertrains which were 50% ICE and 50% electrical power.

The Challenge of Weight Reduction

Now the new target the FIA is setting itself is much lighter cars: “more than 80kg” lighter, Tombazis recently declared in Hungary. To achieve this, the FIA needs more than to ditch the highly complex and expensive hybrid units.

The current power units for 2026 are 34kg heavier than their predecessors, yet the MGU-K (kinetic motor) is just 16kg and the much larger battery store is 35kg. So to achieve their 80kg+ target, something else will have to give.

Part of the problem was that the FIA bumped up the minimum weight of the ICE for this season to 135kg to reduce costs by enforcing heavier, less exotic metallic alloys and limiting expensive titanium composites. By ditching the hybrid systems, this decision could be reversed and some more weight saving could be found here.

Reopening the Refuelling Debate

Yet this does not achieve the FIA’s ambitions, and so a debate over refuelling has been tossed onto the table. At the British Grand Prix, FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem kicked off this controversial topic: “The refuelling we are studying as we speak. It’s not a concern if you do it in the right way. So we are studying this. Nothing is being done yet.

“Refuelling with sustainable fuel with electrification. Maybe we look at giving more electrification than 10%. Really, we are open,” he added. Refuelling was banned for the 2010 season on the grounds of safety and cost cutting—yet the safety angle was always a smokescreen given it happens in other top-tier global motorsport categories.

With much cheaper V8 engines coming down the line, the expense angle is no longer relevant. And so in Zandvoort, the refuelling debate spilled into the public domain as team bosses at the official FIA media event were asked for their views on the FIA’s proposal.

Pushback from Team Principals

First up was the Racing Bulls CEO, Peter Bayer, who had previously worked for the FIA. He said: “When I was still working with the FIA, we had a working group with Formula 1, with Ross Brawn [former F1 sporting director] back in the days, and his team, about how to improve the entertainment, the spectacle.

“One of the big ideas of some people was refuelling. We were digging very deep into historic footage, data that we had, and it showed that other than a couple of very spectacular and dangerous images, refuelling has not done really anything for the sport because most of the overtaking suddenly took place in the pit lane. So I wouldn’t be a big fan of that because it’s proven that it actually doesn’t add a lot to the spectacle.”

Then it was the turn of the Haas F1 boss, Ayao Komatsu, who also poured cold water on the idea: “I’m personally not a big fan of refuelling, really,” he said. “When I was watching from outside, refuelling, it’s just that the race was so difficult to understand as a spectator sitting on the stand.

“Also in terms of qualifying, et cetera. I’m fond of a qualifying car being the lightest, the driver going for everything. So in short, I’m not fond of refuelling – and also the weight and cost and everything – I’m not a big fan.”

Williams boss James Vowles believed refuelling removes some of the intrigue of their pit stops. “We could fundamentally predict exactly where the car is going to stop. You’re always going to take the car right to the end of its fuel load because that’s when it’s fastest, which now means you can predict what’s going to happen, whether someone’s on a two or three or one, it doesn’t matter.

“Nowadays, with the exposure to the outside world, everyone will start getting that information. It actually takes quite a bit of the intrigue out of it for me.” Whilst admitting the FIA’s push to significantly reduce the weight of the cars is a move in the right direction, Vowles also revealed a personal reason for not bringing back refuelling because, “it’s quite warm wearing a race suit when you’re on the pit wall, so I’d prefer not to do that again,” he smiled.

The Math and Mechanics Supporting Refuelling

Yet with the cutback of the hybrid systems proposed by the FIA, the sustainable fuel required for the V8 engines to run an entire Grand Prix (300km) without refuelling will rise by around 35kg—a huge price to pay in weight.

Mandating for fuel tanks which meant the cars could run just half a Grand Prix would slash the weight of the fuel from 110kg to around just 55kg. This is why refuelling is back on the agenda. In terms of the arguments against from the team principals, the first obvious thing to note is that overtaking in F1 back in 2009 was almost impossible due to the aero loads of the cars.

This is no longer the case with active aero introduced for 2026, so pitting because a driver is stuck behind another car and then refuelling is unlikely. The suggestion that all the teams will converge on a single lap to deliver their refuelling is frankly nonsensical. Currently, F1 teams strategise their pit stops in a certain window depending on how the tyres degrade.

Something similar would happen with refuelling, but all the cars stopping together just wouldn’t happen—except maybe with a safety car, which happens now. One downside which none of the team bosses mentioned was that F1 has the fastest pit stops in any motorsport category, and the spectacle of the blur of 22 crew members delivering a two-second service would be lost.

Strategic Potential and Flat-Out Racing

Yet surely the “much lighter and more nimble cars” Lewis Hamilton has been advocating for over a decade would compensate for this. Without 100+ kg of fuel loaded into the chassis at lights-out, cars start the race much lighter. They are visually more reactive, brake later, and set drastically faster lap times, making the sport look visually more intense.

In fact, the opposite of James Vowles’ view that teams would converge to a single strategy is likely. Refuelling opens up multiple distinct strategic approaches. Teams can gamble on a fast “three-stop Sprint strategy” running on light fuel loads, or try a heavy “one-stop endurance strategy,” creating wide pace differentials between cars at different stages of the race.

Back in 2009, the tyres in F1 did not degrade as they do now, and so one-stop or three-stop strategies didn’t exist.

Further, there would be less or no lift-and-coast management, which is the bane of today’s F1 racing. Lighter cars place less thermal stress on tyres, allowing drivers to push flat-out on every lap rather than nursing tyres or lifting-and-coasting to save fuel.

The concerns over qualifying from the Haas F1 team boss are based on the last time F1 had refuelling, when the drivers would qualify with the fuel they intended to start the race. This does not need to be the case and qualifying could remain as it is today.

Further, just as different tyres create different race strategies which the fans understand because they can see drivers starting on soft or hard tyres, this could be mimicked with refuelling. The teams would be forced to reveal at lights-out how much fuel each driver has, which means the fans would understand why certain cars were quicker or slower in this phase of the race.

All in all, for the FIA to achieve their goals of 80kg+ lighter and smaller cars, it’s difficult to see how this can be achieved without refuelling. Yet for now, the FIA faces an uphill task to persuade the teams this is the right direction to go, particularly if one team boss is concerned he’ll have to wear a fireproof suit and be uncomfortable for the duration of the race.

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