One thing you don’t often associate with the glitz and glamour of the SEMA Show is engine oil. It is a decidedly non-flashy product that most enthusiasts treat as an afterthought, usually choosing what’s on sale at the local big-box store. However, for those folks who enjoy science and pay close attention to what they are putting into their engine, Driven Racing Oil has something new for you.
Driven’s new GP-1 high-performance synthetic-blend oil is aimed at balancing cost with performance. “We’ve long been known as a higher-end oil supplier, but not everyone can afford a high-end synthetic oil, or needs one for what they are doing. That’s where GP-1 comes in,” explained David Chamberlain, brand manager at Driven Racing Oil.
While you might be reading “synthetic-blend” and “Driven” in the same sentence, and not quite grasping the two going together, understand, this is no traditional semi-synthetic oil. “We worked directly with the refinery that refines the base oil from Pennsylvania-grade crude and put together a package utilizing our additives with select synthetic base-stocks to make a synthetic blend,” said Chamberlain.
Driven has some of the independent test results on display showing both the advantage of Pennsylvania-grade base oil, and GP-1 oil, compared to other common oils.
The key to the GP-1’s performance-to-price-point ratio is that Pennsylvania-grade base oil. “There are some unique properties of Pennsylvania grade crude and how it’s refined,” Chamberlain explained. “It yields really good lubricating oil itself, without any additives. In a recent ASTM test, the Pennsylvania-grade base oil showed about half the amount of wear as the full-synthetic base oil, before any additives.”
Pennsylvania-grade oil is not a new discovery, having been around long before synthetic oils were common. Combine that high -lubricity conventional oil with modern additives and you have Driven GP-1. “We have a moly friction modifier along with an extreme pressure additive in GP-1. That reduction of friction helps free-up horsepower and runs about 15-degrees cooler in tests we conducted comparing it to similar oils,” Chamberlain said.
Currently available in six viscosities — 20W-50, 15W-40, 10W-30, 5W-20, Nitro70, and straight 30-weight break-in oil — all of the GP-1 oils are E85 and methanol compatible, with the Nitro70 also being compatible with nitromethane fuel. Coming in at about 2/3 the cost of similar full-synthetic oil, GP-1 high-performance synthetic-blend oil provides a significant bang for your buck.