Ignite Racing Fuel in Corona, California

Corn, distilled and blended by the people who grew it

Ignite is not a division of a fuel major. It is a farmer-owned operation in Marion, Indiana, and the corn is grown on the family's own fields across the road from the plant. They plant it, harvest it, mill it, distil the ethanol on site, and blend the finished fuel themselves. USAC named Ignite its official racing fuel back in 2011.

That vertical integration is the entire reason to care. A blend house buying ethanol on the open market is at the mercy of what arrives; an operation that owns every step from the field to the pail controls what goes in the drum.

Why a fixed blend, and not pump E85

This is the whole argument, and it has nothing to do with brand loyalty. Pump E85 is not a recipe, it is a range. The US Department of Energy puts it plainly: E85 contains 51% to 83% ethanol, depending on geography and season. The California Air Resources Board says the same thing about fuel sold in this state — the ethanol content varies by month and location and may be as little as 70 percent.

A calibration is written against a fuel. Timing, fuelling and the knock margin you paid for are all set for what was in the tank on the dyno. If the ethanol fraction moves between fills, the knock threshold moves with it — and it moves in the direction you cannot see until something has already happened. A map developed at the top of that range is not a safe map at the bottom of it.

Ignite states its E85 is blended to a fixed 85/15 ratio on every batch. Taking the variable out is the same reasoning as the hub dyno: remove the thing that moves, and what is left repeats. How we measure is that doctrine applied to the number instead of the fuel.

What ethanol actually does

Two properties do the work. Ethanol as a fuel resists detonation far better than pump gasoline — ethanol rates around 110 pump octane where gasoline rates 84 to 93 — and it takes far more heat to evaporate. Roughly 918 kilojoules per kilogram against about 350 for gasoline, which is around two and a half times as much heat pulled out of the intake charge on the way in.

Those two together are what let a calibration run more timing and more boost before knock becomes the limit. And there is a wrinkle worth knowing: SAE research has shown that the octane rating actually understates ethanol's knock resistance in a direct-injection engine, because the standard octane test uses carburetion and cannot reproduce the in-cylinder charge cooling that direct injection gets. On a boosted DI engine, ethanol is doing more for you than its number suggests.

None of it is free, and this site does not pretend otherwise. Ethanol carries less energy per gallon, so the engine needs more of it to make the same power — on the order of 20 to 37 percent more on E85, and closer to 50 percent on E98. Fuel economy falls accordingly. On a lot of otherwise healthy cars the factory pump is the real ceiling rather than the injectors.

The three blends we keep

E8585% ethanol

Where most ethanol calibrations live$80 / 5 galEnough knock resistance to change what a boosted engine will take, on a blend a well-sorted street fuel system can usually feed. It is also the blend a flex calibration is written around. Budget somewhere between 20 and 37 percent more fuel volume than gasoline.Add E85 — $80

E9090% ethanol

More margin, more flow$80 / 5 galIgnite positions this one at 500 hp and up. The extra knock resistance is real, and so is the extra demand — every point of ethanol is more volume your pumps and injectors have to move to make the same power.Add E90 — $80

E9898% ethanol

Effectively neat ethanol$80 / 5 galCompetition territory, and the step people under-estimate. Near-neat ethanol needs roughly 50 percent more volume than gasoline — not the 30 percent figure quoted for E85 — so a fuel system that was comfortable on E85 can run out here.Add E98 — $80

What ethanol asks of the fuel system

Ethanol attacks materials that gasoline leaves alone. Zinc, brass, unprotected aluminium and lead-plated steel all degrade in contact with it, as do natural rubber, polyurethane, cork and a number of the elastomers and adhesives used in gaskets, filters and flexible lines. Unplated and stainless steel, black iron and bronze are fine; aluminium is acceptable hard-anodised or nickel-plated.

We check fuel system capacity and compatibility before we take ethanol work. If a combination cannot support it safely we will say so rather than write a calibration that leans on a pump already at its limit. E85 calibration covers what we do and do not sell — we write the calibration, we do not fit conversion hardware.

Buying it here, and why it cannot be posted to you

It is sold at the shop, and it is collection only. Most people pick it up alongside a booking rather than making a separate trip — call ahead if you need a particular blend on a particular day.

We cannot ship it, and neither can anyone else who is being straight with you. Ethanol-gasoline blends above 10 percent ethanol are UN3475, a Class 3 flammable liquid in packing group II. The federal exception that lets small quantities of hazardous material travel as an ordinary parcel caps the inner container at one litre. A five-gallon pail is nearly nineteen times that, so it can never qualify — it is a fully regulated hazmat shipment, freight or counter only. If a seller offers to post race fuel to your door, that is worth a second look.

Everything else we sell does ship. The shop has the calibrations, the interfaces and the apparel, and those go anywhere in the US.

What we will not tell you about this fuel

Ignite does not publish a technical specification sheet. There is no octane figure on a stated scale, no oxygen content, no specific gravity and no stoichiometric air-fuel ratio available from the manufacturer or any dealer — and the “114” in Red 114 is a product name, not a published octane rating on any scale we can point you to.

We are telling you that because you will not find it said anywhere else, and because the alternative is repeating numbers we cannot stand behind. What we can tell you is what it does in an engine on our dyno, measured, with the conditions on the sheet.