With The No Testing Ban In Effect Teams Look To Spend Money Elsewhere

Like in gold - black gold that is.

Oil.

Not just in any oil though, special chemically engineered synthetic motor oil not available to the general public or to other race teams for that matter.

There is a good article at The Wall Street Journal about how Joe Gibbs Racing has developed, and is continueing to develop, their own ‘special’ motor oil for their race engines.

Joe Gibbs Racing, a team that owns three top-level Sprint Cup cars, has spent about $1 million a year over the past decade to perfect its motor oil. As a result, its engines have squeezed out an extra 10 horsepower, a roughly 2% increase that can be a serious advantage in Nascar races, where the typical margin of victory is about one second.

Remember the engine problems those Gibbs cars had at Lowes last year during the All-Star Race? It was originally reported that JGR had put experimental engines in their cars but I wonder if they were experimenting with their motor oil during that event instead in order to get ready for the Coca Cola 600 the very next week.

This whole idea about teams spending money to develop a better motor oil to increase engine performance and decrease engine wear isn’t a totally new concept to me as I have also been a long time fan of Drag Racing and the NHRA and the casual race fan of the sport has been aware that the top teams in the NHRA have been doing stuff like this for a long while now - how do you think things like Slick 50 have been developed?

With stuff like this coming to into public light it makes you wonder what else NASCAR teams have been doing covertly and within the rules (so far at least) to get that extra advantage on the track.

I mean they have been playing outside the rules for years like tampering with the racing fuel and there have been rumours going around about tire/rim tampering too but those things are getting harder to do as NASCAR has become more aware over the years of the level of ‘rule bending’ that goes on.

Why do you think NASCAR hired Gary Nelson years ago? Because he was a Crew Chief for some of the biggest racing teams of the 80’s and 90’s like Hendrick and Yates and, if you believe the stories, he was probably one of the biggest cheaters out there too.

How does that old saying go? Hire a thief to chatch a theif? Or something like that anyway. It is the same here, hire a cheater to catch a cheater, and Nelson has done a good job in his role as a NASCAR official.

With that being said, we all know that teams try to work outside the rules, after all it ain’t cheating until you get caught - and I’m fine with that - but where I’m left wondering is what else are these guys doing to get that advantage over the competition while still working within the rules.

That’s what I want to know.