Sentronics Hit Allengra With an F1 Flow Meter Patent Suit One Week Before COTA

A week before first practice at Circuit of the Americas, one F1 fuel-sensor maker sued another in Texas. Sentronics Holdings Limited filed against Allengra GmbH for patent infringement in the Western District of Texas on October 16. The case is 1:26-cv-02927, and the docket shows four entries, all dated filing day: the complaint, a patent-form notice, a corporate disclosure statement and a request for a summons. None of them is a motion.

The sensor category matters because it is mandatory. Article 5.11.3 of the 2026 power unit technical regulations (issue 6, March 2024) requires a fuel flow meter wholly inside the tank, with all fuel delivered to the power unit passing through an FIA-homologated sensor. A team cannot swap in a different one on its own.

The docket

Sentronics demanded a jury, filed under 35 U.S.C. § 271, and is represented by David Magee. The complaint was docketed with an Exhibit A and an Exhibit B, which we have not seen. Allengra is the only defendant listed. No team and no FIA entity is named.

The copy of the docket we read was retrieved the day of filing. It lists no assigned judge and no counsel for Allengra, and a summons was requested but no proof of service appears. Allengra’s deadline to respond runs from service, so on that record the clock has not started.

The patent

The patent is U.S. 11,391,609, titled “Flow meter,” granted July 19, 2022 from an application filed April 24, 2017, claiming priority to a British application of April 25, 2016. The named inventors are Andrew Cawte and Jamie Nathaniel Jones. It was first assigned to Sentronics Ltd, and an assignment to Sentronics Holdings Ltd was recorded on November 20, 2023.

It has 18 claims, three of them independent (1, 15 and 16). Claim 1 covers a method: send pairs of periodic signals through a fluid in opposite directions along a path, take the difference in their propagation times, calculate flow rate from it, and alter the phase of each signal relative to at least one other signal. The abstract says the phase shifting is there to average out noise from echoes and transducer ringing.

A European patent from the same family, EP3449221B1, appears in the record. Allengra is not mentioned anywhere in it. Twenty years from the April 2017 filing date puts the nominal expiry in April 2037, before any adjustments.

The FIA’s paperwork

Both companies are on the FIA’s homologation list. Technical List 45 shows Sentronics as FIA-OBFFM-002 (models FS-100-01, FS-100-01E, FS-100-02) and Allengra GmbH as FIA-OBFFM-003 (GT-100-01, AL-12-0026, AL-12-0066). The version we read is dated August 3, 2021 on its face. It requires accuracy of ±0.5% and a measurement rate of at least 2.2 kHz.

The FIA’s sole-supply tender for the 2021 to 2023 seasons, extendable to 2024 and 2025, has no patent warranty or infringement indemnity in it. The supplier’s warranties cover only its power and authority to sign (General Condition 4.1), and the indemnity covers supply failures, not intellectual property. The FIA gets a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to the product for the contract term. Purchase price is capped at £5,000 per sensor, though the price table is headed in euros.

That is the old tender. We could not find the document for the 2026 to 2030 term; the FIA’s tender page listed no entries when we checked. Allengra’s website does not mention Formula 1 or the FIA. Sentronics’ says it has supplied F1 teams “under sole supply for the last six years” and does not mention Allengra.

The record will show next whether Allengra answers or moves to dismiss, and whether Sentronics ever files for an injunction. We have covered F1 court filings before, including the Antonelli and Minardi dispute in a Bologna court and the Red Bull filings on Christian Horner’s severance, and the supplier fight sits in the same stack of paper.

Should the FIA make its sole-supply sensor makers indemnify the sport against patent claims, or is that a risk the series should carry itself?

Sources: Sentronics Holdings Limited v. Allengra GmbH, No. 1:26-cv-02927 (W.D. Tex.) docket; U.S. Patent 11,391,609 B2; FIA Technical List 45; FIA invitation to tender for the F1 fuel flow meter, 2021 to 2023; 2026 Formula 1 power unit technical regulations, issue 6; Sentronics and Allengra company websites.

About the Author

Shawn Henry

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Shawn Henry has spent years writing about cars, and it shows—not in a resume kind of way, but in how he talks about them. He's the type who'll notice the weird trim option nobody remembers and actually know why it mattered. At Backfire News, he covers pretty much the whole spectrum: off-road trucks and trail builds, performance cars, racing, and the collector market. He's comfortable getting into the technical weeds, but he never forgets that most people read about cars because cars are fun, not because they want a spec sheet. His beat runs from classic and collector vehicles to overlanding culture, modified performance builds, new automotive tech, and the industry news that actually affects what ends up in your driveway. Mostly, though, Shawn thinks the best car stories are about people—the builds they pour money into, the road trips, the communities that form around a shared obsession. That's the stuff he likes writing about, and it's what you'll find in his work here.

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