The fuel whose selling point is that nothing happens
T4+ is unleaded, clear and oxygenated, and it exists to be a drop-in replacement for the pump. Everything interesting about it is a problem it removes rather than a number it adds.
Every petrol nozzle in Europe now tells you what is in it
Since 12 October 2018 every filling station in the EU has had to carry the same circular labels on its nozzles, under Directive 2014/94/EU and the EN 16942 standard. Petrol reads E5 or E10 — the letter is ethanol, the number is the maximum percentage of it by volume.
That labelling was a consumer-information measure and it had a side effect nobody designed: it made the ethanol content of pump fuel a visible, checkable fact rather than a rumour. A rider filling a can at a motorway services can now read what is going into the bike.
For most machines this does not matter. For a four-stroke that sits between race weekends, with a fuel system that was never specified for it, it is the beginning of an argument that VP built T4+ to end.
98.5, clear, and no lead in it
T4+ is 98.5 (R+M)/2 — 92 MON and 105 RON. Specific gravity 0.7475, vapour pressure 7.47 psi, and 5.94% oxygen, which makes it an oxygenated fuel rather than a straight hydrocarbon blend. It is unleaded, and it is colourless: no dye, because there is no leaded fuel underneath it that a scrutineer needs to tell apart at a glance.
VP publishes a short list of what it is for, and it is unusually specific about the boring end: a direct pump-gas replacement with no ethanol in it, for stock or modified four-stroke engines, with 98 octane to protect against detonation, and better behaviour than pump petrol over a long storage period.
T4+ is built as a drop-in for anyone already running T4 — similar tuning to T4, with the ethanol and lead question removed. VP's own case for the change is modest and bounded: up to 2% more power and better throttle response across the rev range. A company willing to print 2% is a company that measured it.
Reducing the variables
The applications list is the argument
VP lists T4+ against motocross, motorcycle road racing, ATV and UTV, snowmobile, karts and personal watercraft, and powerboat. Six disciplines that share almost nothing except a four-stroke engine and an owner who does not want to think about fuel.
That breadth is the point and it is also the risk. A fuel sold to six classes is a fuel nobody in any one of those classes thinks of as theirs, which is exactly how a genuinely useful product ends up invisible next to a leaded blend with a colour and a following.
The colour wall on this site makes that visible in one frame: T4+ is one of the clear ones. It has no swatch to be remembered by.
On the shelf in Europe
T4+ is in the European catalogue as part 4312, in a five US gallon pail — the same pack size as the rest of the four-stroke range, so a workshop already stocking the shelf is not learning a new size to carry one more product.
It is built for exactly the gap the pump-label rule opened: a drop-in replacement for pump fuel that a four-stroke owner can pour straight in, whatever E5 or E10 said on the last nozzle they used. Drop-in is not the same as optimised, though: VP Racing Fuels always recommends proper tuning to achieve the best possible performance and get the full benefit of the fuel.
Which leaves the argument for T4+ where the specification already puts it: no lead, no ethanol, no colour — a blend whose entire case is a specification, sold through a catalogue that shows a pack size and a part number and never once explains what problem it removes.
- VP T4+ FuelVP Racing Fuels
VP's own product claims: pump-gas replacement with no ethanol, up to 2% more power and better throttle response than T4, 98 octane, similar tuning to T4, storage benefits.
- VP Racing | Reducing The Variables with T4+ FuelVP Racing Fuels
The film embedded above, on VP's own channel.
- Directive 2014/94/EU on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructureEuropean Union · 22 October 2014
The fuel-labelling requirement behind the E5 and E10 marks on EU pump nozzles, applicable from 12 October 2018 via the EN 16942 standard.
Every blend VP publishes, with its published specification and who runs it.