Most hand cleaners are sold on one promise: they cut grease. What they do to your hands afterward is usually left out of the conversation.
That’s where VizionOne found its place in the relentless world of drag racing.
Developed by Texas emergency room physician and NHRA Comp racer Ashton “Doc” Hudson, VizionOne was created to do two things at once: remove the grime mechanics, racers and those making a living with their hands deal with every day while helping keep their skin from paying the price.
Anybody who has spent time around a race shop knows the routine. You get dirty, wash up and go right back to work. Repeat often enough and some hand cleaners can leave skin feeling as worn out as the parts that are being serviced.
Hudson said the idea began from a medical perspective. As a physician, he regularly saw how damaged skin can become when people use aggressive cleaners over time.
In emergency medicine, hands are constantly washed, sanitized and exposed to irritants. Hudson said that environment sharpened his understanding of what repeated chemical exposure and stripped skin can do over time.
“From the medical stuff, it’s based on skin, like how to improve your skin, how to take care of your skin,” Hudson said. “Most of the products that are out on the market today, they usually have some petroleum base, come from a chemical plant, refinery, something like that. So it was like, how do we get back to natural?”
The answer wasn’t in a hospital. Hudson found it in France during his leisure travel. In reality, most people don’t go on vacation and come home wanting to make soap, but Hudson did.
A trip to Marseille, France, introduced him to a centuries-old soapmaking tradition built around olive oil and other natural ingredients. Long before petroleum-based cleaners became common, the region had built a reputation around simple formulas designed to clean everything from clothing to skin.
Years later, during the COVID era and all of the handwashing that came with it, Hudson found himself thinking about those soaps again.
“I remember that soap that we got in France,” Hudson said. “I started looking up how to make soap and that’s really where it came from.”
VizionOne’s formula uses oils more commonly associated with traditional soapmaking than industrial hand cleaners. Palm oil, soybean oil and coconut oil form the foundation, with coconut oil serving as the primary cleansing agent.
Hudson said the difference is philosophical as much as functional. Many heavy-duty cleaners rely on petroleum-derived solvents originally intended for industrial equipment, not skin.
“When industrial soap was first made, if you had a factory and you had a greased wheel or a vat, regular soap was never going to do that,” Hudson said. “So they had to come up with the idea of a solvent.”
He distinguishes between cleaning metal and cleaning people.
“If you’re cleaning your parts, then yeah, you probably should use a solvent,” Hudson said. “But for something for your skin, being a doctor, there’s no way I would tell you, ‘Hey, that’s okay to use that.’”
Hudson wasn’t trying to reinvent a product to clean parts. He was trying to build something people could use multiple times a day without feeling like they’d sandblasted their skin.
In drag racing, nobody pays much attention to a crewman’s hands until they stop working or don’t work as well as they should.
Crewmembers handling clutch dust, grease, fuel residue, rubber debris and track grime may wash their hands multiple times in a day. Bottom-end mechanics, fabricators and shop workers know the cycle well: clean up, dry out, repeat.
During a long race weekend, a crewmember might wash up before first round, after first round, after servicing the car and again before loading the trailer. What removes grime quickly can also wear skin down just as fast.
Hudson said that’s where users begin noticing the difference.
“Yes, it works super excellent for cleaning your hands,” he said. “But after you use it for several days, you’ll notice that the skin on your hands starts to repair itself and your hands will go back to feeling soft and natural like normal skin.”
He added that users often notice fewer cracks around cuticles and less of the rough, stripped feeling common with harsher products. Around race shops, cracked knuckles and dry hands are often viewed as part of earning a living. Hudson sees it differently.
Racers generally have a barometer they read loosely when it comes to hand cleaners. If it’s gentle, users wonder if it works. If it’s aggressive, skin usually pays the price. Hudson said VizionOne tries to bridge that divide through ingredient choice.
The VizionOne formula uses French green clay and bentonite clay, both of which are known for their absorbent properties. Bentonite usually pulls oil from surfaces, while green clay has long been associated with skin-care applications.
For scrubbing texture, the product uses jojoba beads instead of harsher grit materials.
“They provide abrasiveness, but since they’re spherical, they don’t cause micro tears in your skin,” Hudson said.
It’s a different approach than the harsher abrasives commonly found in many heavy-duty hand cleaners.
VizionOne hand cleaner isn’t the only product in the company’s lineup.
The broader Vizion One portfolio includes a high-end detailing operation and its own car-care products. In other words, the company didn’t arrive from the health-and-beauty aisle. It came from the automotive world, where dirty hands are part of the daily routine.
That background helps explain why the product has gained attention among racers and mechanics. Both groups tend to have a pretty reliable BS detector. If something doesn’t work, word usually travels through the pits faster than any advertising campaign.
At the end of the day, nobody buys hand cleaner because it has an interesting storyline. They buy it because it cleans their hands.
The difference, Hudson believes, is what happens after the dirt is gone.
For mechanics, racers and anyone who earns a living with their hands, that may be the real selling point.
“The main thing you will notice is that your hands and skin start to go back to feeling like normal hands and skin,” Hudson said.
