With the finals of the Formula Student competition beginning this week, Motorsport UK and Coryton have revealed that one third of the 130 university teams entering the competition have opted to use Coryton’s sustainable fuels, including a team from Italy and another from Slovenia. The universities of Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow Caledonian, Kingston, Exeter, West of England, Sheffield Hallam and Wolverhampton have also chosen the environmentally friendly alternative.
As part of the 2023 Formula Student competition, Motorsport UK provided entrants with a grant to use Coryton’s sustainable fuels to power their respective ICE powertrains. The fuel is stated to offer up to an 80% reduction in GHG emissions. Coryton’s products are second-generation biofuels and contain no fossil fuels – the carbon used in the fuels is recycled from the atmosphere.
“The University of Wolverhampton sees Coryton Sustain 100 as a completely viable solution,” explained Nick Skidmore, from the School of Engineering at the University of Wolverhampton. “It enables us to compete with the lowest impact on the environment using our existing internal combustion engine, which has served us well for the past seven years. It can reduce fossil fuel carbon emissions using ‘above earth’ carbon sources to produce a 100% sustainable petrol and we are pleased to use it for our 2023 Formula Student entry – Wolf #7. We believe this to be the truly sustainable direction to drive the development of our car and the education of our students.”
Sheffield Hallam University’s SHU Racing chose Coryton’s 95 RON E10 fuel for the sustainability and practical benefits it offered.
“The largest part of choosing it was the sustainable factor,” commented Troy Butler, powertrain lead and MEng automotive engineering student. “For the competition, we have to develop a business case as if we’re presenting to investors, and our concept is a junior racing series, which we’d start in the UK but try to go global with. The sustainable option is the much better choice, especially when it comes to looking at going global. When we looked at it, the cost of EVs globally is quite high, especially for a prototype or spec series.”
“We’re looking to achieve the top 25 percentile in every single event, and then an overall top 10% score in the competition,” said Brendan Bourne, team principal, SHU. “There’s a huge importance within the dynamic (on-track) events to ensure you’re consistently scoring high throughout all the events, while also ensuring your vehicle is reliable and finishes the endurance event with, ideally, a high optimum efficiency, because those can maximize the team’s points.”
“By funding the use of sustainable fuels for those teams that choose an internal combustion engine, we hope to inspire the next generation of engineers to have a broad view of the future technologies of propulsion,” said Hugh Chambers, CEO of Motorsport UK.
