MXGP

Honda HRCFifty years and five thousand miles from where it started

VP's MXGP programme is not an American drag fuel company expanding overseas. VP has supplied racing series across disciplines for fifty years, and motocross is the one it arrives at now, on another continent.

VP Racing is the official fuel of Honda HRC.

Part of this story

Jeffrey Herlings

#84, Honda HRC. 2026 MXGP World Champion.

Honda HRC

Factory MXGP team. One of four running the same fuel.

VP MOTO-R

96 R+M/2 unleaded, oxygenated. FIM approved.

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The part that can be checked

2026 MXGP: World Champion
Clinched: Türkiye GP
Titles: Six
Fuel: MOTO-R

01 — THE SEASON

A first season that ended two rounds early

Jeffrey Herlings arrived at Honda HRC for 2026 after a career spent entirely with KTM. Changing manufacturer at that point in a career is usually a season written off to learning, and it is normally described that way in advance by everybody except the rider.

The championship was decided at the Türkiye GP on 5 and 6 September, with two rounds of the calendar still to run. It is his third MXGP title and his sixth world championship.

The switch is the part that will be remembered. The rest of the grid spent the winter assuming the first year would be a transition.

02 — THE PADDOCK

Four factory teams, one drum

Honda HRC is one of four factory MXGP operations running the same fuel. Yamaha, TM Moto and Bud Racing run it too, which is an unusual arrangement in a paddock where most technical inputs are a point of difference between manufacturers.

What it means in practice is that, for those four teams, the fuel is not a variable anybody is tuning around. It is a constant, and the engineering argument happens everywhere else.

Who races it

The rider

Jeffrey Herlings

#84 · Honda HRC

2026 MXGP World Champion, clinched at the Türkiye GP on 5–6 September with two rounds still to run.
First season on Honda, after a career on KTM.
Third MXGP title. Sixth world championship overall.

Since 1975San Antonio, TexasSupplied from Europe

The method is older than the market

VP Racing Fuels was founded in San Antonio, Texas in 1975, experimenting with blends to improve horsepower beyond what existing fuels offered. The first product was C12, and it gained traction locally before there was a company to sell it.

Through partnership with Buddy Morrison and David Reher, VP built a cycle of innovation: advances in fuel technology improved Reher‑Morrison’s engines, and the engines pushed the fuel back.

Drag racer Warren Johnson was the first paying customer. His results and Bob Glidden’s, both on C12, made it one of the most renowned race fuels in motorsport. C12 is still on the shelf, which is why every blend here carries the year it entered service rather than a paragraph in a corporate section nobody opens.

So an MXGP programme is not the discipline VP came out of. It is the same method in a different paddock: get inside the development loop, and leave the fuel as the one input nobody argues about.

The first-ever VP Racing product, C12, gained traction locally, leading to the establishment of the company.