Racing is in the Blood & Oil is in Racing: VP Racing Fuels Charts New Ambitions

Briar Bauman (3), Dallas Daniels (32), and Jarod Vanderkooi (20) on the podium at the Memphis Shades Ventura Short Track event with the VP Racing Fuels checkered flag and hats. [Photo: American Flat Track / Kristen Lassen]

DAYTONA BEACH, FL – September 12, 2025 – (Motor Sports NewsWire) – Back in the early ‘70s, an enterprising young drag racer from San Antonio named Steve Burns with more ambition than money started experimenting with home-brewed fuel blends in his family garage. 

Armed with the knowledge obtained by camping (literally) outside the Library of Congress for days to pour over declassified military documents, Burns turned that ambition into an empire. 

50 years after its founding, VP Racing Fuels is now known as the “World Leader in Race Fuel Technology.” From its initial drag racing and motocross origins (Ken Howerton lived down the street from Burns), VP now boasts 80+ fuel blends and is the official fuel for countless racing series, including IMSA, NHRA, SCORE, IHRA, World of Outlaws, SRO GT World Challenge, and MotoAmerica, not to mention a multitude of major league race teams. 

That list, of course, includes Progressive American Flat Track. 2025 is the sixth successive season in which VP C10 Racing Fuel has been utilized as the spec fuel of Progressive AFT, while VP’s STAY FROSTY Race-Ready Coolant has served as the series’ Official Performance Coolant over that same span. 

Already owning a huge presence in the Progressive AFT paddock, VP is positioned to further expand that footprint. 

A decade ago, VP Racing Fuels introduced three racing oils aimed at automotive racers. Since then, VP’s oils and lubricants line has grown to over 50 products, with the powersports segment being a relatively recent addition. 

As such, VP has actively targeted two-wheeled motorsport to showcase the capabilities of its powersports oils, a charge spearheaded by VP Lubricants Division Manager Jaret Lozano. 

If that surname sounds familiar, as a Progressive AFT fan, it probably should. 

And for fans of motorsports more generally, it most certainly should. 

Lozano’s grandfather, Harold, was a significant figure in the Texas drag racing scene back in his day. And Jaret’s father and uncles, Mike, Joe, and Ben, took that tradition and ran with it.  

A drag racer and flat tracker himself, Mike, along with his brothers, founded Lozano Brothers Porting (and later Lozano Brothers Racing), which subsequently found extraordinary success in building race-winning engines. 

LBP race engines have racked up multiple victories in the 24 Hours of Daytona, claimed pole for the Indy 500, and scored numerous sports car titles. More recently, those talents returned to two wheels in the form of AHDRA drag racing titles and Progressive AFT race wins. 

These days, Mike is spearheading the engine development program for the American Honda/Turner Racing Transalp that just scored Honda’s first twin-cylinder-powered premier-class victory this millennium in Springfield. 

In fact – and perhaps not surprisingly considering their shared roots in the ‘70s San Antonio drag racing scene – Lozano Brothers Porting and VP Racing Fuels go way back. 

Jaret explained, “Race engines are the family business that started in the early ‘70s with Lozano Brothers. And actually, Steve Burns, the founder of VP, was a good friend. When Steve started, we rented out a little space in San Antonio, and he started making fuel, and we helped him develop fuels along the way.” 

Jaret lived with his mother in Colorado from his elementary days up through high school. After graduating, he moved back to San Antonio to continue his education, join the family business, and continue pursuing his own racing aspirations.  

“I started racing go karts when I was 12. And then in high school, I got more serious. So I raced for a handful of years until my mid-20s… go karts, formula cars and some circle track. 

“Then I decided to have kids and have a family. That whole time I was working for Lozano Brothers building race engines. I was our main dyno guy – I dyno’d all of our engines before they went out. We kind of specialized in 24 Hours Daytona – endurance type motors – and Trans Am and Can-Am, but also a little bit of IndyCar and (NASCAR) Trucks.” 

After stepping away from motorsports and getting a job as an account manager for an accounting firm, Lozano was pulled back in – this time by that old family friend. 

“Steve (Burns) just called me about 14 years ago and said, ‘Hey, what are you doing? We have a couple of products like this smaller engine fuel that we need to launch and kind of get going. Come help us…” 

More recently, Lozano received another call – this time from Alan Cerwick, who bought VP Racing Fuels from Burns shortly after Lozano joined the company – to head up its growing Lubricants Division. 

Now a year-and-a-half in that position, Lozano is actively working with race teams to further develop their product and expand their two-wheeled presence. Among those already using VP Racing Fuels’ oils and lubricants are BarX Yamaha Racing in AMA SuperMotocross, Giaccmoto Yamaha Racing in MotoAmerica, and JCR Honda in off-road racing. 

To build upon that trend, VP has elected to follow the same strategy that has proven so successful in the racing fuels arena. 

Lozano said, “Street oils just need to be a certain spec. It’s like street gas where it’s just made to a spec and not much beyond that. But on these racing oils – just like we kind of do just like our racing fuels – it’s high-quality items. It’s pure base stocks, pure additives – the best we can get – and it’s developed specifically for the application.  

“For a lot of these, we’re not really worried about the ‘specs’ per se. When you put a lubricant on the shelf at O’Reilly, for example, you want to meet JASO MA2 (standards) for clutch and catalyst performance, and things like that.  

“But on these racing oils, you can get a little more aggressive, and you put certain additives packages to make it work better because there’s more RPMs involved, there’s more power, there’s more load. There’s just a lot more extreme conditions to deal with.  

“And just like on the race fuel, we formulate in a special way. It kind of makes our fuels unique to other competitors, and we make a ton of power doing it.  We’re always looking for something different – the best packages and the best combinations.  

“And on the lubricant side, we’ve done a similar thing. We try to use the best packages available, but then also the combinations you have to get right – the right amount of certain components. We always look at different things we can tweak and make it different.  

“In oils, some of the brands that we’re competing with have been around forever. So we develop ours similar to what those guys do and then see how we can improve it. We feel ours are as good or better. Just like with fuels, we look at Sunoco, Total, ELF, and all these guys constantly to understand what they’re doing so we can make ours better. And that’s how we approach lubricants as well.” 

Lozano noted that they currently offer full synthetic 10W-40 and 10W-50 powersports oils that would be a strong option for any flat track team but emphasized that VP is constantly seeking to offer better and better solutions. 

“I’m actually developing a different 10W-40 as well as a 15W-60 for 450 motocross bikes. It’s a little bit heavier. It’s more aggressive for clutch performance for those bigger bikes. 

“Like I said, we haven’t been around as long as some of our competitors, so we’re still coming forward with new products. We’re developing two or three oils that are more aggressive to handle those bigger bikes and have even better clutch performance versus a 10W-50 that you’d find on the shelf.  

“We’ve been testing it with BarX and some other teams. They’re all loving our new 15W-60. And then we’re tweaking our 10W-40 that runs in the 250s. We kind of throw the JASO MA2 and those specs out the window because there are certain levels of phosphorus and things that won’t meet the spec. But we have to tune it that way for it to perform as it should under massively extreme conditions out in the middle of a 450 race.  

“That’s what the process is doing… Coming out with a few more better, even more aggressive, oils to accomplish that goal. Once we roll that out, then we’ll see what applications make sense. And some of the guys may hop over to our 15W-60.” 

Progressive American Flat Track teams included? 

“Potentially yes.” 

That’s a potential Lozano and VP Racing Fuels as a whole are motivated to make real. Eager to build upon its preexisting dual roles as the spec fuel supplier and Official Performance Coolant of the series, VP wants to demonstrate the capabilities of its powersports oils in direct competition with its rivals in America’s original extreme sport. 

“Progressive American Flat Track is a high-echelon championship – really cool, unique, and it’s been around for a long time. It’s kind of a no-brainer for us because we’ve been involved with two wheels for so long. We absolutely love flat track racing, and it’s a good synergy for what we do.  

“It’s just a perfect fit for us, really.” 

About Progressive American Flat Track: 

Progressive American Flat Track, sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing, is the world’s premier dirt track motorcycle racing series and one of the longest-running championships in the history of motorsports. Sanctioned by AMA Pro Racing in Daytona Beach, Fla., the series is highly regarded as the most competitive form of dirt track motorcycle racing on the globe. For more information on Progressive American Flat Track, please visit us on the web, like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, check us out on Instagram and catch all the Progressive American Flat Track racing action on FOX Sports. 

Source: Progressive American Flat Track

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