Consolidated Power

Sport news Recently approved by the World Motor Sport Council, a new section within the International Sporting Code provides motor sport stakeholders with a clear baseline for developing sustainable power sources for competition.  FIA Technical Engineering Director Thomas Chevaucher  explains how Article 266 of Appendix J sets a safe standard and outlines how it will develop in the future  The FIA’s energy transition roadmap ensures that motor sport remains at the cutting edge of technological innovation, remaining not just relevant, but essential to the future of sustainable mobility. As part of this mission, set out by FIA President Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the FIA Technical Department is in the process of defining the gradual introduction of sustainable power sources across motor sport, and in order to ensure this happens, the associated regulations also need to be developed.  On the surface, World Motor Sport Council approval for the creation of a new article to sit within the extensive appendices of the International Sporting Code carries little of the easy news appeal of championship calendar reveals or incident-related rules updates. But while outwardly lacking the gloss of a new race location or the glamour of an incoming competitor, it is those thoroughly researched and carefully worded revisions that not only define how current competition is conducted but often help to shape the future of motor sport itself.  Article 266 of the International Sporting Code is just such a mechanism. Initially developed by the technical and safety research groups and guided by experts from the FIA Electric and New Energy Championships (ENEC) Commission, the article was approved by the October meeting of the World Motor Sport Council for inclusion within Appendix J of the ISC. It creates a general regulatory framework for all energy sources used in FIA competition. And while that might sound dusty and bureaucratic, the assembly of a set of baseline demands for competitions and series using the array of energy sources now in play in motor sport is key to the development of future motor sport and hugely important when it comes to promoting the broader uptake of sustainable mobility solutions, as FIA Technical Engineering Director Thomas Chevaucher explains.  “If you go back a few years ago, there was nothing other than fuel. Now, with the advent of new technologies and alternative energy sources, the landscape has changed enormously,” he says. “One of those sources is hydrogen and some time ago we began to formulate regulations for hydrogen power in motor sport. It was while developing those regulations that we thought: ‘the constraints we are going through with hydrogen are similar to what we went through for high-voltage technology. It’s not the same risk, it’s not the same mitigation, but conceptually it is the same— we are storing a new energy and we need to define how to do that safely’. At that point we began to see a wider need – to pull all the new energy sources together to create a single point of reference across all of our championships. And then to share best practice from one to another.” Setting technical standards – across championships The result is Article 266, a document that defines how to formulate and store combustive or traditional fuels, advanced sustainable fuels, high voltage energy and hydrogen. It is, says Chevaucher, a way of simplifying what had the potential to become a confusing range of demands from series to series.  “The truth is this has never been seen as a global energy change for motor sport,” he says. “Formula E, WEC, all the categories that use high-voltage technology, have regulations that were developed independently. Advanced sustainable fuel is used in two categories, with the same process. To now have everything in the same place means a category wishing to move to, say, advanced sustainable fuel now has a clear roadmap to follow. And that’s important because the use of new technologies is a key element for automotive and for motor sport in the coming years.” However, despite each of the regulations making specific demands of manufacturers, the new regulations do not curtail variation or innovation in the development of propulsion systems. = “I would say we are giving a guideline on how we want to build what we call an Energy Storage System – whether that is a Rechargeable Electric Storage System (RESS) for electric vehicles or a liquid hydrogen storage system or a fuel tank – so that the storage of that energy is safe. And in terms of the source, hydrogen is hydrogen and electricity is electricity, but fuel can be plenty of things. So we are also defining the fuel. = “Take Cross-Country as an example,” says Chevaucher. “It is a category in which there are a lot of prototype vehicles and where manufacturers can more or less do what they want in terms of how they power a vehicle. However, to be able to enter FIA Cross-Country races, they will now have to comply with this new set of regulations or we can’t accept them, because they are not safe enough. Once they are compliant then they can fully explore all the possibilities the championship’s regulations allow. Again, if you look at Formula E batteries compared to Formula 1 batteries, they are very different. They are still complying with this new regulation, but the parameters are very different. But that difference is defined in the category regulation.”= Fuelling the future of motor sport  While he says that the regulations within Article 266 have been set at “the current knowledge of the technology” Chevaucher adds that they constitute a ‘living document’ and that a dedicated group within the FIA will bring updates to the rules as technology is refined or new technologies emerge.  “We have tried to gather the state of the art on all these different energy sources but there is always more,” he says. “To address that we recently created a dedicated Research and Development group within the Technical Department of the FIA to focus purely on future technology.= “Currently the group is mainly working on the development of the full set of hydrogen regulations but once that process is complete the focus will become broader and following the strategic direction of the ENEC Commission, they will have responsibility for all new energy sources and how those develop.” Building best practice Defining regulations to meet the eventualities of technologies that have not yet been widely adopted or explored, would seem to be akin to pinning a technical tail on an invisible donkey, but Chevaucher says a combination of rigorous testing and whole-industry expertise helps the FIA to arrive at clear future regulations.  “That is the challenge,” he says. “You want to promote use of a technology that is not yet widespread in order to develop sustainable mobility and competition, but often issues are not yet apparent, so you are trying to anticipate what might go wrong. To give one example, we are currently trying to do failure analysis on hydrogen storage tanks. We have constructed prototype tanks that we damage on purpose to see what happens.  “We have the target to improve the level of all the regulations,” he concludes. “It’s really important for us to say: ‘OK, let’s share this information with everyone, make sure that any energy regulation is there, that’s they are easy to find, clear and simple and then build upon that’. It’s our job to make sure that everything written there is kept at the top level.” technical Regulations World Council Sustainability World Motor Sport Council All fia sport Sport 1SportWorld Motor Sport CouncilAll fia sporttechnicalRegulationsWorld CouncilSustainability00 Wednesday, November 12, 2025 - 10:42am Wednesday, November 12, 2025 - 10:42am