Formula 1 likes to talk about the future in sweeping terms — new rules, new audiences, new markets — but the sustainability report it has published for 2026 is one of the few places where the sport’s progress can be judged in hard numbers rather than ambition.
The headline figure is eye-catching: F1 says its carbon dioxide emissions are down 35% versus its 2018 baseline. For a championship that has expanded its footprint and now runs 24 races, it’s a meaningful reduction, and F1 insists it remains on course for its net zero target by 2030.
There’s an obvious temptation to frame this as a feel-good PR win, but the more interesting story is how much of the reduction is coming from the unglamorous, behind-the-scenes parts of the business. The cars matter, of course — but the sport is also a travelling broadcast and logistics machine, and that’s where the biggest gains (and the biggest remaining headaches) live.
On-track, the 2026 rules reset has given F1 a cleaner narrative to sell: the cars now run with fully sustainable fuel, and teams are carrying around a third less fuel to complete a race. That’s significant both symbolically and operationally; less fuel on board changes how cars are built and raced, but it also gives F1 a simple, visible proof point that the “new era” isn’t just a marketing line.
Yet F1’s own report points to factory power and event delivery as the areas where the sport can make rapid, scalable cuts without waiting for the next technical cycle. Investment in renewable energy sources at team factories has helped drive a 64% reduction in emissions in that area compared to 2018 — comfortably the most aggressive improvement in the document. In a sport where the real work happens long before the lights go out on Sunday, the teams’ infrastructure is no longer a footnote in the sustainability conversation; it’s central to it.
Event operations emissions, meanwhile, are down 6% versus 2018 despite the calendar growing to 24 races. That’s a smaller number, but arguably the harder one to achieve. Promoters don’t all start from the same place, and F1’s paddock is not a pop-up show that can run on vibes and extension leads. Power, freight, temporary structures, hospitality — it all adds up. Shaving emissions off that total while the sport continues to expand suggests some of the new standards are beginning to bite, even if progress is inevitably uneven from venue to venue.
Calendar “rationalisation” has also been pushed as a key lever, and F1 is clearly keen to be seen doing the obvious things better. The report highlights efforts to regionalise race groupings to reduce long-haul movement between consecutive events. Canada is no longer wedged between two European rounds, and the championship has aimed for more coherent clusters: Europe mid-season, an early run in Australasia, then the Latin American rounds later in the year.
If you spend any time around team logistics staff, you’ll know this is where slogans meet reality. Calendar logic is never purely geographic — it’s a negotiation between commercial deals, venue availability, weather, politics, and the sport’s own appetite for certain dates. But even incremental improvement pays dividends when you’re shifting hundreds of tonnes of equipment around the world.
It’s telling, too, that F1 is talking increasingly about freight mode rather than just fuel type. The championship says it will continue moving away from air freight towards sea freight, with sustainable maritime fuel positioned as the next major area of investment. That’s a nod to the scale of the logistics challenge: you don’t decarbonise a global series purely by tweaking the cars if the freight plan still defaults to “fly it”.
Sustainable aviation fuel has become a centrepiece of F1’s messaging here as well. The report says the sport has invested in using sustainable aviation fuel alongside the sustainable fuel now running in the 2026 cars, and it has doubled its investment in SAF. For a championship built on being in the right place at the right time, aviation is the toughest part of the emissions equation to tackle without making trade-offs that would hit the sporting product. So F1 leaning into SAF is both practical and political: it signals intent without asking the series to stop being what it is.
Stefano Domenicali, F1’s CEO, framed the report in the language the sport prefers — delivery, not declarations.
“At Formula 1, we act and show our achievements through facts, not just words, and I am incredibly proud that we remain on track to achieve net zero by 2030,” he said, crediting efforts across teams, partners, promoters and the FIA. Domenicali also underlined the balancing act at the heart of the strategy: reducing the footprint while “the sport continues to grow and reach new audiences around the world”.
Ellen Jones, F1’s Head of ESG, struck a similar tone, stressing that sustainability is being treated as a decision-making filter rather than a side project. She pointed to the increased SAF spend, F1’s first investment in sustainable maritime fuel, and ongoing collaboration with promoters and teams as proof points that the plan is getting more concrete.
The report also flags the “Future Race Operations Programme” as a mechanism for further reductions, alongside the full impact of calendar rationalisation “which will come into effect from the 2026 season”. That last line is easy to glide past, but it’s doing a lot of work: F1 is effectively arguing that some of the biggest structural changes to how it travels and operates are only now beginning to show up in the numbers.
None of this means the sport is close to being able to declare victory, and F1 knows it. But in a year where the championship has launched an all-new technical era and still has 24 events to service, a 35% reduction versus 2018 is a serious statement of progress — and a reminder that the most important engineering work in modern F1 isn’t always happening under the engine cover.
