The waste from the cars, the maintenance, transportation, and the event itself go above and beyond. Yes, everyone totally keeps the fancy kitty litter around to get every single leak and so forth. Sure…
Not to mention the increased exhaust.
As for scale: Yes, it really does matter.
Rough numbers time.
According to chatgpt, an F1 car has a max fuel capacity of 110 kg per race. Obviously they try to avoid using all of that for a range of reasons, but sure. Not gonna bother to write the math, but that is about 39.29 gallons.
Roughly 20 cars on the starting grid, and let’s assume for the sake of easy math that every car used a full tank for practice, both rounds of qualifiers, and the race itself. So 4*39.29*20=3143 gallons per race for the cars alone.
Still chatgpt because the window is open, but the average sedan has 12-18 gallons tanks.
3143 / 12 = 261 cars. 261 cars use the amount of fuel used in a single F1 race in between trips to the gas station.
Still using chatgpt: average attendance numbers range from 10k to 100k spectators.
So yeah. The amount of fuel used in a given F1 race is a drop in the bucket relative to just how much is used by the cars that bring people to watch them. And I have intentionally not included the trucks used to transport the f1 cars or even the trains and boats.
And that is why, while it isn’t good and I am opposed to it, the lead that may or may not still be used in F1 fuel (chat gpt says no, random ass quora page says 5 mg/L. Whereas, if there were even trace amounts of lead in the gas that gets everyone else to the F1 race…
The environmental impact of an F1 race, let alone a season, is horrendous. Even if we are talking formula E or whatever the current pure electric league is. And fixating on older fuel composition in the light of that is, quite frankly, asinine and self defeating.
Hell, the dirt and dust around the more rural tracks probably has MUCH more lead than the fuel.