What is the official fuel of NASCAR? Everything you need to know about it

Just like tires in racing are a consumable, fuel is also a crucial aspect of how a racecar's engine reacts to the driver's inputs, with NASCAR being no different.

While Ohio-based tire manufacturer Goodyear has been the official tire supplier for the sport, Sunoco fuels has been the official fuel of NASCAR for nearly two decades now.

The Texas-based distributor of motor fuels has been in an agreement with the sport since 2004 and has been the exclusive fuel supplier for the pinnacle of stock car racing, along with the Xfinity and Craftsman Truck Series.

Junior grassroots stock car racing series, such as the ARCA Menards Series also use Sunoco, the official fuel of NASCAR.

Sunoco Green E15 is 85% highly refined Racing gasoline, this could be traditional in that it is not the ethanol portion of fuel but it insinuates that it is typical pump gas. Ethanol doesn’t give the fuel its green color. Dye is added to differentiate between grades of fuel.

Supreme is a leaded fuel and 260 GTX is unleaded with no traces of lead in it

Green E15 has a research octane number, RON, of 104. Motor octane number, MON, of 93 which means the advertised octane at the pump, (R+M)/2 is 98 octane. Also, Ethanol doesn’t have a RON of 113, in fact, ethanol octane number can’t be measured. A similar number of Blending Octane Value, BOV, can be measured for ethanol.

How much fuel does a NASCAR Cup Series car use during a race?

As per a survey conducted by Time magazine, a single Cup Series car uses anywhere in the range of 120-130 gallons of Sunoco Green E15 over the course of a typical Daytona 500 weekend. This does not include practice and qualifying sessions and only accounts for the 500-mile-long event on Sunday.

With superspeedway tracks such as the Daytona International Speedway and Talladega Superspeedway consisting of flat-out racing, fuel usage numbers are typically higher on these tracks compared to short tracks and/or road courses.

The 2015 Daytona 500 saw 43 cars compete, with an estimated 5375 gallons of Sunoco Green E15 being used in one single race.

Watch the Cup Series cars powered by Sunoco take to the World Wide Technology Raceway this Sunday, for the Enjoy Illinois 300 presented by TicketSmarter. The race goes live on June 4 at 3:30 pm ET on FOX Sports.