Verus Lubricants has partnered with Blake Haigh Racing for the Formula 500 season, backing a Queensland speedway campaign that runs on regional dirt tracks rather than metropolitan circuits.

Formula 500 is one of the more honest classes in Australian speedway. Engines are capped at 500cc, run naturally aspirated on methanol and drive the rear wheels by chain. Cooling can be air, water or oil depending on the build. Nothing about the car is oversized, so every component works close to its limit every night. The class traces its lineage back to the Three Quarter Midgets of the 1950s and remains a proving ground for drivers stepping up through the ranks.

Blake Haigh Racing is planning 10 to 12 meetings across regional Queensland centres, with scope to travel further as the campaign builds.

The reason Verus is involved has less to do with the racing than with who is standing at the fence. Speedway crowds in regional Queensland are heavy transport operators, mining maintenance crews, farmers and workshop owners. They are the same people Verus supplies through its distributor network, and they are notoriously hard to reach through conventional advertising.

The partnership is built around content rather than signage alone. The team produces weekly material across YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, covering in-car race footage, workshop builds and repairs, and crossover segments from karting and motorbikes. For a challenger brand, sustained weekly presence in front of a specific trade audience does more work than a logo that appears a dozen nights a year.

Verus branding carries on the car and team apparel through the season, with brand presence in the pits at selected meetings.

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