F1's Fuel Flow Meter Supplier Is Sued Over a Patent Days Before the US Grand Prix

Formula 1 arrived in Austin this week with a court case travelling with it. Sentronics Holdings, the British company that supplied the FIA’s fuel flow meters from 2018 through 2025, has filed a federal patent lawsuit against Allengra, the German company that beat it for the 2026-2030 contract and whose sensors are now fitted to every car on the grid. The case was filed on October 16 in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, the district that contains the Circuit of the Americas.

What is the lawsuit actually about?

A measuring method. The fuel flow meter is the sensor that tells the FIA how fast fuel is reaching the engine, and it matters because the fuel flow rate is how the sport caps power: burn at the same maximum rate as everyone else, or break the rules. Crash.net’s explainer of the case sets out that one approved meter design is fitted to every car. Sentronics’ patent, No. 11,391,609, covers a method of measuring that flow using phase-modulated ultrasonic signals. Its claim is that Allengra’s meter uses the same method, and that its own lab testing back in 2024 proved it.

Why does the filing call the infringement willful?

Because of a date. RacingNews365, which has seen the filings, reports that Sentronics served formal written notice of the alleged infringement in August 2025, and the complaint argues that Allengra’s continued use of the design after that notice makes the infringement willful, a word that carries weight in US patent damages. The timeline in the filings runs: patent applied for in April 2017, granted in July 2022, the same month Allengra revealed its own meter; the two companies then contested the FIA tender in 2023, which Allengra won for 2026-2030. Sentronics also alleges Allengra used the standing of the F1 contract to win contracts and relationships in other markets, and Bloomberg Law’s account of the complaint notes the same replacement pattern across other series, including German touring cars and World Superbikes.

Why was the case filed in Texas, days before the Austin race?

Because that is where the alleged US infringement is easiest to point at. The complaint, in the passage quoted by Crash.net, argues that importing and using the devices at races in the United States, naming Austin, Miami and Las Vegas, is itself direct infringement, and that Allengra induced the teams and the FIA to use them. Filing in the Western District of Texas a week before the cars run in Austin puts the case in the race’s own courthouse at the moment of maximum attention. The Austin weekend already had a full agenda before this landed, from Antonelli’s first chance to clinch the title to the paddock’s first look at the published 2027 regulations restoring the 305km distance.

Will any of this touch the racing this weekend?

No, and the filings are clear about it. Sentronics is not asking the court to stop the meters being used. There is no request for an emergency temporary restraining order, which is the step that could have put a question mark over the cars, and RacingNews365 reports none is being sought at this stage. What Sentronics wants is money: damages and compensation for lost profits dating back to the patent’s issuance in July 2022, plus rulings against Allengra, and it has demanded a jury trial. The race runs, the meters stay in the cars, and the argument happens in court over the winter and beyond. For readers tracking how the sport’s technical rules get enforced on track rather than in court, the FIA software glitch investigation from the Malaysia weekend is the recent on-track version of the same governing habit.

What happens next in the case?

The ordinary, slow things, unless someone accelerates them. The court has been asked to issue a summons. Allengra will have to answer the complaint, and the FIA, which ran the tender and mandates the meter, has been asked for comment by RacingNews365 and had not responded in the coverage checked for this article. The interesting open question is institutional rather than legal: the sport’s power cap depends on a single supplied sensor, and the supplier of that sensor is now defending a claim that the device itself infringes a rival’s patent. How the money side of single-supplier deals is structured is covered in this site’s F1 cost cap explainer, but a patent fight over a mandated part sits outside that framework entirely. It belongs to the teams and the FIA as customers of a part they did not design and cannot easily swap, which is why a case about one sensor, filed by a company no longer in the paddock, is worth more than a footnote in an Austin race week.