When it comes to trying to show me how rather splendid Shell V-Power fuel is, Shell have certainly had their work cut out.
Blinding me with science is a bit tricky, I scraped a C at A level Chemistry back when anything above a D was still considered meritorious ( you know before they had to come up with various different levels of “A” grade). Putting me behind the wheel of a super car was definitely a step in the right direction, it did let me do a direct car vs car comparison test. I think they’ve finally hit pay dirt by letting me come along to free practice at the Belgium GP at Spa-Francorchamps. They also kindly allowed me and my fellow SVP Champs to purchase tickets at a discounted rate for the actual weekend of qualifying and the race.
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| It’s raining. Even in the shrubbery |
If I’d have bothered to read the Wikipedia entry about the circuit, I’d have noticed that “At one stage in its history it had rained at the Belgian Grand Prix for twenty years in a row.” This sort of knowledge would have helped my chum Simon out dramatically had he known before he set for Belgium. He spent most of Saturday in a bush trackside getting rather wet. At least I had a waterproof coat with me..
Shell take a mobile fuel lab to each of the European GP. It’s teeny tiny but packed with techie stuff. It looks like they have Apple Mac’s in there, so they must be cutting edge. The whole lab sort of flat packs in an area I’d be hard pushed to fit our holiday packing. Track side they do complicated fuel and oil analysis. When the F1 cars oil is drained, they can do some astonishing analysis that actually picks up tiny bits of metal that are worn from the engine and float around in the oil. Far too small to see but analysis picks them up. People were asking technical questions but the best I could come up with was, “Do you recruit small scientists to work in the mobile lab? Space is at a premium.” For the record they don’t.
F1 is really really high tech and I’ve probably forgotten enough about the science behind F1 to fill several technical manuals but what I have taken from all this is the Shell boffins are incredibly clever. Given how similar (99 point something very high percent) Shells V Power fuels are to the F1 fuels, I’m more than happy shoving the fuel in my tank.
In a way, buying cheaper fuel is a bit like the false economy of driving out of your way to save money on filling up. According to XKCD, every mile you go out of your way to save a penny on a gallon of fuel is negated by the fuel you use to get there. And from spending my own hard owned cash on Shell V Power for our Zafira, I’m coming to the conclusion that often supermarket fuels are a false economy too.
Disclosure: I’ve done loads of really cool stuff courtesy of Shell. However they have never paid for petrol for either of our family cars. They’ve told us stuff and let us come to our own conclusions.