Nascar Oil

"With Nascar increasingly cracking down on the use of technology in sport to cut costs, motor oil is one of the last places teams can innovate without restraint," writes Reed Albergotti in the Wall Street Journal (4/10/09). Over the past ten years, Joe Gibbs racing "has spent about $1 million a year … to perfect its motor oil," enabling its engines to squeeze out "an extra 10 horsepower, a roughly two percent increase that can be a serious advantage in Nascar races, where the typical margin of victory is about one second."

Such oil is "packed with synthetic lubricants, new polymers and experimental molecules," and is created in secrecy by scientists whose identities are protected and are known only as Douglas and William-the-Chemist. "I don’t want other teams trying to find out who these guys are," says Lake Speed Jr., who is in charge of oil for the Joe Gibbs team. While there is no commercial market for the oil, Gibbs does help fund its R&D "by selling its own branded oil to amateur autoracers."

However, the oil is "not the same oil the team’s drivers use" for fear a competitor might reverse engineer the formula. The oil couldn’t be used in ordinary passenger cars in any case because "their unfamiliar additives would destroy the catalytic converter. They also contain more sulfur, which makes them reek of rotten eggs." The oil experimentation does pay off for Gibbs, though, and while the drivers usually get the credit for the win, Lance Speed winks that it’s all in the oil, because, after all, "I’m the oil guy."