For avid race fans, the professional racetrack is a place to cheer on their favorite drivers as they compete to take home the checkered flag. For WIX Filters, a speedway represents one of the world’s best research facilities. In fact, partnerships with NASCAR’s leading teams and vehicle manufacturers help WIX engineers develop innovative components and technologies for both race cars and everyday vehicles.

WIX maintains a 15-year relationship as an associate sponsor of Joe Gibbs Racing as well as a partnership with Toyota Racing Development that extends to the very first Toyota in NASCAR, Robert Huffman’s #38 Toyota Celica, which started in the 2000 Goody’s Dash Series. WIX’s partnership with Toyota Racing Development (TRD) includes the design and supply of WIX filters for all Toyota vehicles racing in every NASCAR series, including the Camry and Tundra. These two partnerships drew even closer with the recent news that Joe Gibbs Racing will be switching from Chevrolet to Toyota in 2008.

WIX Filters – long recognized as the #1 Filter in NASCAR because its filters are trusted by nearly 100 percent of NEXTEL Cup, Busch and Craftsman Truck Series teams – takes a multi-faceted approach to its work with the sport’s top competitors. In fact, nine of 12 drivers in the 2007 Chase of the Championship will be running with WIX filters protecting their engines.

The WIX Filters and Joe Gibbs Racing partnership offers tremendous benefits to both organizations. The track is a living R&D lab for WIX engineers. The work the engineers do there and the partnership with Joe Gibbs Racing helps assure that WIX will continue to design leading edge high performance filters and filter components for JGR as well as passenger cars and trucks. And the brand’s exclusive relationship with Toyota Racing Development is further validation of the technical superiority of WIX’s filtration offerings and their ability to offer foreign nameplate coverage.

Research data also flows from the race teams to WIX, since the ultra-intense world of NASCAR competition is a great testing ground for focusing on scenarios such as high temperatures, fluctuations in pressure and rapid breakdown of engine oil. Crews test filters and other components both on the track and in the race shop, providing data and filters from races and test sessions for WIX to analyze in its research lab.

Among the product components designed as a result of at-track research are sealing gaskets for oil filters that withstand sudden exposure to high pressures, high temperatures, and synthetic oils; synthetic filtration media that holds up better under high pressures and when impacted by high flow contaminants; and premium metal coatings for metal components that resist corrosion in severe environments.

WIX engineers also share what they learn from their heavy- and light-duty research with NASCAR teams, working with crew chiefs and engineers to develop solutions to the unique problems encountered in the grueling world of professional motorsports.

Although the filters that WIX develops for consumer and heavy-duty applications must be more efficient than racing filters to ensure smaller particles are filtered out, many of the components used to manufacture these filters were born on the racetrack. Research at the biggest and fastest testing grounds available helps provide the assurance that the materials WIX puts into its filters have held up against tougher conditions than customers are ever likely to face on the highway or the jobsite.

An official NASCAR Performance Product, WIX utilizes the professional racetrack as their most grueling testing ground for automotive filtration products. Thousands of miles of on-track research with NASCAR’s top teams translates into optimum performance on race day, and WIX has the results to back up its claims: In 2006, the champions in each of NASCAR’s three elite series drove to Victory Lane with WIX filters under the hood.

In WIX’s 40th year of track-to-street technology transfer, their commitment to research and development assures the filters they develop for passenger cars and trucks can increase an engine’s life 20 times longer than the leading brand – a fact that puts everyone in the winner’s circle.