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Well, I don't know what level of motorsports racing or sponsorship you were involved at, SlvrBullIT, but I can honestly say none of the major engine suppliers in Indy Car based their oil recommendations on "freebies"...
Our team had lease contracts with both Ilmor-Mercedes-Benz and Cosworth-Ford at different junctures and neither were in any way compensated by Mobil. In fact, they were more than happy to try any oil your team might be getting from a sponsor and provide you not only oil analysis but also evaluations of component wear characteristics using your team's sponsor's oil.
Interesting story for you...
At one point we had one of the largest motor oil companies in the world as our primary sponsor. In fact, they literally "bought" the whole car - i.e. they got the color scheme and their logos splashed all over the car, our transporter and tractor rig, uniforms, etc., etc., etc., and we had to do tons of promotional work for them, including show cars and the like. Needless to say we got all the oil we wanted and/or could need for the race efforts at the Indy 500 and all our other events. It was a plush, multi-seven-figure sponsorship deal... The kind you always dream of.
There was only one problem...
Even the ultra-trick, super-special, produced-just-for-their-race-efforts "synthetic racing oil" showed
HORRENDOUS wear and tear on the engine components when the first engines in need of scheduled rebuild went back to Cosworth. Cosworth was so alarmed they asked us for some samples of the oil right out of the container to have analyzed right along with the used oil that had come out of the mileaged engines in for rebuild. They even put two identical Cosworth XB's up on the dyno - one with our sponsor's oil and the other with their baseline Mobil 1 - and ran them to check and make sure of their previous conclusions. Between that and the independent oil analysis data they determined that we would could potentially have some really severe and major engine issues if we continued to use the sponsor's oil, whose name everyone here would recognize instantly if I were to reveal it.
We were between a real rock and a hard place. At first we informed the the oil company of the findings, and they said they would check it out with their chemical engineers. They determined that their oil was fine and to continue to use it. We did go through another entire engine cycle and had Cosworth check everything again, and again the results were frighteningly alarming wear and potential engine explosions.
So bad, in fact, that Cosworth said they would not honor their usual policy of backing up an engine that failed prior to the normal rebuild mileage schedule provided it had not been overreved, etc.
So what did we do?
Well, for the rest of the season we went out and bought Mobil 1 synthetic from an old friend that was a distributor, and who was also thankfully incredibly discrete... And we would get in cases of the sponsor's oil, carefully open the boxes, and pour it into 55-gallon drums at our race shop to be used for our shop vehicles, employee's vehicles, lawn mowers, etc., etc., etc. - you name it. Meanwhile we would refill the sponsor's oil bottles with Mobil 1, carefully recapped them, and put them back in the cases, carefully then gluing them back shut. We did this all late at night so we would have all the shelves at the shop and in the transporter stocked during times when we might have visitors or other "eyes" around, and as such it always appeared we were pouring the sponsor's oil into the oil tanks of the race cars.
Was it a deception? Certainly, but one we felt was necessary to insure thant we never had an engine failure. One, those engine rebuilds form Cosworth were not in the least bit cheap, and two, it would have looked mighty bad for the oil company sponsor if we ever had an engine grenade from an apparent lubrication-related failure.
And we never did have any engine problems, and we kept the sponsor for quite a while. Oddly enough, when we had to switch over to the normally aspirated IRL powerplant rules each of the engine suppliers/builders we used there did much the same kind of analysis and testing of the same sponsor's "racing oil" and came to the same conclusions that Cosworth did, and as such we carried on the deception and continued to use Mobil 1 oil we actually bought.
BTW, for some this story may sound incredible and might somehow amke one think we were somehow not being fair with the sponsor. I'm sorry if anyone feels that way, as I assure you things like that happen much more than most think in motorsports. Actually, I never did feel we were being unfair to the sponsor... Quite the opposite. I felt they were being unfair to us in not providing us an important component we needed to reliably and safely compete and run up front in races for them.
I did, however, often feel we were being unfair to the fans and consumers who might have bought the sponsor's oil products based on our team and performance. Little did they know the oil we were "selling" was something I really didn't even want in my lawn mower or shop truck. The only advantage for us was that we got so much oil from the sponsor that we could all afford to change it incredibly often in any shop vehicles - sometimes less than every 1,000 miles...
Still, it bugged me that people might have bought oil based on what we were doing, and that the oil they may have bought was less than desirable by our standards.
Anyway, there's a racing oil story for ya'...
And another illustration of why I use Mobil 1 even to this day in my vehicles for the most part (I don't use it in some of my motorcycles that have very specific needs...).
Just FYI.
Dallara
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