Gear
From vineyards to Victory Lane: I spent a high-octane weekend shifting gears and grapes with Valvoline and Hendrick Motorsports learning how proprietary preparations can give you the leader’s advantage.
Posted on Nov 8, 2024 8:00 AM EST
Tony Ware
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I’m at my second NASCAR race ever, and I’ve made it to Victory Lane. Admittedly, all I had to do was scramble over a couple of barriers, flashing a laminate. I spent most of 110 laps comfortably seated overlooking the Sonoma Raceway, about an hour north of San Francisco, and the hardest thing to steer were snacks to my face.
It’s June 9 at the 2024 Toyota/Save Mart 350, and I’m a guest of Hendrick Motorsports, celebrating the organization’s 40th anniversary and the first-place finish of Kyle Larson—driver of their No. 5 entry Valvoline Chevrolet Camaro ZL1. Larson and his team have skillfully navigated left and right turns plus strategic pit stops to earn his third victory of the season and his second career victory on this demanding, 12-turn 2.52-mile road course.
This is hilly terrain, woven into the same patchwork as the vineyards blanketing these iconic valleys. It’s Northern California, and I’ve spent time in the festival-like atmosphere at the invitation of Valvoline to learn about two fluids that keep the region running: engine oil and wine. And that education kicks off two days earlier with a far different victory.
Pole position
The story begins, as so many Californian tales do, at a winery. Specifically Judd’s Hill, a second-generation family winery on Napa’s Silverado Trail. Appropriately, a winery started 35 years earlier out of the owner’s garage. That’s a location familiar to mechanics and winemakers alike. But there are no socket wrenches or ramps or dirty rags, no destemmers or presses or fermentation tanks at our workshop. Just a sunny courtyard full of tables topped with full wine bottles and empty graduated cylinders.
We’re here to learn about blending varietals and to experience how a few milliliters of Cabernet, Merlot, Malbec, or Petit Verdot can change the acidity, the levity, the complexity of a wine. And we’re here to learn how this relates to Valvoline’s latest premium synthetic, Restore & Protect (spoiler alert: you still can’t drink it).
Let’s start with the wine. Well, wines. We’ve been split up into two teams to participate in a competition. Judd’s Hill has put out four of the six typical red Bordeaux grapes and challenged each of us to find a balance of fruit and structure that speaks to our palate, then decide amongst our respective team which one has the most depth. Once we’ve declared our collective prizewinner, we’ll “bottle” our proprietary ratio and present it to three judges for a blind tasting to declare which team triumphs.
As we pour and putter and tweak our tannins, we hear from Dr. Michael Warholic, global technology director, Valvoline Global Operations. A chemical engineer by trade and lead formulator in the company’s Lexington, Kentucky, labs, Dr. Warholic introduces us to Restore & Protect. It probably sounds difficult to make engine oil relatable, but Dr. Warholic’s quarter-century in the industry helps. And, considering the serene setting, appealing Mediterranean climate, and the amount of test swirls, sniffs, and, most of all, sips we must take—in the name of science—we’re pretty receptive.
Pit stops
Both wine and motor oil result from small chemical components with significant effects. In the case of wine, microclimates, terroir, nutrients, drainage, and more contribute to the maturation of different grapes. Small changes in sugar content (Brix) and Acidity (pH) each vintage impart distinct flavors and impact aging potential. Additional factors, such as the type of oak barrel each grape is stored in and the ambient temperature and time it stays there, contribute to the end result.
Not everyone can pick out the subtler nuances when you tweak the proportions of a leathery Cabernet Sauvignon versus a fleshy Merlot. And that’s OK. Some wines change your life, but most just change your day. When it comes to your vehicle, however, “what’s in your engine is about 85% oil … but it’s the 1% or 2% of this additive or that in premium products like Restore & Protect that really make the biggest difference,” says Dr. Warholic.
“In a combustion engine, real estate is precious … you’ve got friction modifiers, detergents, anti-wear agents all competing for surface space, so getting the right balance of each molecule is critical. And Restore & Protect achieved that.”
Every few years, the science flip-flops on the benefits of drinking wine in moderation. We’re currently on no amount is “good” for you. But no one has ever said the same about whether oil can delay gasoline engine damage. Restore & Protect, which exceeds ILSAC GF-6A and API SP specs, even aims to reverse age-related build-up.
“We put two Ford Mustangs on a dynamometer and took them 300,000 miles … then we tore them apart and found that one of them got cleaner with each oil change, which was remarkable,” says Dr. Warholic. Another example given involves tearing down the engines of Ford Explorers after 500,000 miles of standard private label oil use to find multiple nearly stuck rings. Comparatively, continued use of Restore & Protect minimized cylinder wall wear by 79%.
Dr. Warholic reinforces the messaging by directing us to a display box that shows a quartet of pistons and the amount of deposits removed from them between the first and fourth oil change. This is thanks to two proprietary technologies—“Active Clean” and “Liqui-Shield”—developed to not just slow down aging but bring back and maintain a factory-clean state with regular maintenance intervals. It can’t put metal back, but it can guard it against further wear.
Playing with all these polymers and percentages sounds like a winning formula. Speaking of winning formulas, we follow up the Restore & Protect presentation with a presentation of our own. We’ve selected our team’s meritage and dubbed it “ValvoWine.” With 10% Merlot 60% Malbec 30% Cabernet Sauvignon, it’s giving Cahors meets California—dense dark fruit that balances chewy and creamy but leans more ripe than rustic, not at all aloof. It’s a crowdpleaser, and the judging panel agrees. We emerge victorious, congratulatory bottles of our alcoholic assemblage in our hands. Maybe oil and water do mix, in a sense.
The parallels between automotive lubricants and California wine country, which we explore from our base at the Silverado Resort, don’t end just because the blending competition does. Valvoline’s been around since 1866, while the first winery in Napa Valley, Charles Krug, was established in 1861 (Buena Vista in Sonoma Country predates that at 1857). Both Valvoline and these valleys have long a long heritage and both have come a long way building on some shared fundamentals.
Fluid dynamics are an integral part of each finished product. The viscosity of an oil is critical for it to properly reduce friction, while the way a wine flows determines its mouthfeel—the synergy between taste and texture. Heat plays an outsized role in both, contributing a factor that can impact engine oil coating parts and wine fermenting properly. Both oil manufacturers and winemakers must be concerned with filtration and keeping solids from settling. And all of this plays a part in aging, in knowing when fluids are at their most stable and supple.
These thoughts and more cross my mind as we enjoy lunch at Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars. It’s not only picturesque but a pivotal location in the history of California wine as its Cabernet Sauvignon won at the 1976 Judgment of Paris wine tasting, announcing New World viniculture got something to say. And the vineyards—with their ideal exposure, diverse soils, and moderate slopes—are oriented in a way that leads to exceptionally rich grapes and powerfully performing wines, if you know how to properly manage canopy, pests, etc.
Orientation. Spacing. Air circulation. Irrigation. Ideal temperature ranges. Preventing overheating and optimizing output. All to produce a long finish. We’re talking topography, but it’s a mix of conditions and innovations that sound like motorsports. And that brings us back to NASCAR.
The checkered flag
There are fluid dynamics and then there’s fluid and dynamic, and you need both to win at the Sonoma Raceway. It takes adjusting suspension and gear ratios, etc., to handle the sharp directional shifts. But it also takes drivers who can retune their style and responses to elevation changes, braking, and acceleration zones that are far different than oval racing. It takes fuel and tire management perfection. And it most definitely takes the most thermally stable, degradation-resistant engineering.
Restore & Protect was the product of nearly 150 people and three years of modeling and real-world testing, both for its mass-consumer version and special formulations for Hendrick’s sponsored Chevrolets. After each race, Valvoline takes the oil back, analyzes it, and correlates it to data from the track. It’s a great gauntlet to test how it can minimize metal-on-metal contact, how advanced additives prevent burn under extreme environmental and operating conditions.
No, my car isn’t getting the same high-stress substance. Still, higher-mileage vehicles can benefit from stripping away the engine-killing carbon compounds that trap heat and let it propagate. After all, who doesn’t want a little more pep when accelerating, smoother idling, increased fuel economy, and maximized engine life—all of which could prove possible over time with Restore & Protect.
“Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday” is a longstanding auto-racing phrase. And if it rings true, some serious Restore & Protect may have sold following Larson’s first-place finish. It was certainly an exhilarating ending to an informative weekend. Standing in Victory Lane, I watch Larson take a celebratory sip from the Winner’s Circle goblet of red wine. If only it were ValvoWine.
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