The adapt or die mentality that will shape F1's future

If you found the blanket coverage of November’s COP26 UN climate change conference in Glasgow hard to take, beware. My topic is grand prix motor racing’s role in helping to combat climate change caused by human activities.

While mainstream media brought us deep insights on driving an electric car from London to Glasgow and asked politicians why they use aeroplanes, the world of motorsport was walking the walk. Formula E, Extreme E and other motorsport EVangelists led the way.

Meanwhile, Formula 1 heads towards a future in which its highly efficient hybrid engines will no longer be powered by fossil fuels. It may seem counter intuitive that senior figures in F1, the FIA and the teams care so much about climate change. This is motor racing after all…

The truth, as they say in F1, is in the data. Back when I started attending Formula 1 events in the mid-1980s, a road trip across continental Europe was invariably followed by a visit to the car wash in order to remove the hundreds of insects stuck to the windscreen. No longer.

Between 1997 and 2017, Danish ecologist Anders Moeller collected data showing the number of insects killed on the surfaces of cars had fallen by 80%. His 2019 paper supported a peer-reviewed study by German scientific publication Plos One which revealed that mid-summer ‘flying insect biomass’ had plummeted by 82% in 63 protected nature areas.

Meanwhile in Malaysia, between 2000 – the year after F1 first visited Sepang – and 2012, the country lost 14.4% of its wilderness to deforestation. When F1 first visited Shanghai in 2004, the city boasted 16.4 million inhabitants. Today that number is almost 28 million.

New FIA president ben Sulayem has arrived in the role at a time where sustainability is of far greater importance than ever before

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

You get the picture. To be part of F1’s travelling circus is to have a window on the world. We collect the data first-hand, often with our own eyes. This is before we even start to discuss the impact of burning the black gold extracted, refined and distributed by names which are very familiar: BP, Shell, Exxon Mobil, Orlen, Gulf and Petronas.

Formula 1’s November 2019 announcement that it would target net zero carbon emissions by 2030 has been followed by a welter of initiatives, investments and announcements.

Press releases from teams announcing FIA Environmental Sustainability Accreditation seem to arrive every other week. Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton promotes a meat-free diet, Nico Rosberg has reinvented himself as champion of environmental technologies and Sebastian Vettel will happily discuss sustainable farming or the litter plague.

Former Williams and Mercedes technical director Paddy Lowe is over a year into his new business, Zero Petroleum, which aims to produce fuels and petrochemicals synthesised by the recycling of water and carbon dioxide using renewable energy – in essence taking carbon dioxide out of the environment, creating a circular, carbon-neutral energy supply which will not add to the stock of CO2 warming our planet.

Williams’ team principal Jost Capito is “convinced” motorsport will die unless it helps develop meaningful solutions. Capito recently announced his team aims to be become climate positive by 2030 thanks to initiatives including generating its own energy, reducing waste and carbon emissions from travel.

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Capito is positively excited at the prospect of F1 providing a high-speed laboratory for the development of super-efficient, e-fuel-powered hybrid engines; certain that Formula 1 needs to play to its strengths and help develop some of the technologies upon which society’s future may depend.

Adapt or die…

Williams boss Capito says teams can't wait for F1 to deliver on its promises and must take action independently

Photo by: Williams F1