http://blog.al.com/blogoftomorrow/2009/04/did_secret_blend_of_motor...

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story about how Joe Gibbs Racing has spent about $1 million a year for the past 10 years trying to develop a better motor oil for its cars -- an oil that will help deliver an extra 10 horsepower.
The story relates how the formula for this motor oil is a secret guarded almost as carefully as the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Joe Gibbs Racing, one of Nascar's richest and most-successful teams, won't say which company assembles its synthetic oil and will only identify the scientists who work on its formula as "William the chemist," who's in charge of formulating the oil, and "Douglas," who used to work for NASA and is in charge of analyzing the team's worn engine parts under a microscope. "I don't want other teams trying to find out who these guys are," says Lake Speed Jr., who runs the team's oil program.
And then it mentions how the team tried something new with its oils last year at Talladega.

Qualifying oils are thinner and faster, while regular motor oils have more viscosity to protect engines longer. Before Talladega last season, Joe Gibbs Racing decided to try thinning out its regular racing oil with a mixture of qualifying oil to eke out slightly more horsepower. After running the experiment by Douglas and William, Mr. Speed got a warning from the two scientists. "You're scaring the hell out of us," they told him. The experiment worked, and one of the team's drivers, Kyle Busch, won.
That would have been the spring race, which Busch won when a caution came out on the last lap.