After six years of sponsoring teams in MotoGP, Moto2 and Moto3, it appears national oil company Petronas will be withdrawing its sponsorship of Sepang Racing Team (SRT). From a motorsport.com report, Petronas will no longer support SRT’s racing efforts, with SRT concentrating instead on the MotoGP team.
However, despite a stunning debut in 2019 and narrowly missing winning the MotoGP world championship with Franco Morbidelli in 2020, SRT found themselves in something of a quandary coming to the close of the 2021 season. Current rider Morbidelli will be promoted to the Yamaha Factory team, replacing Maverick Vinales who rather acrimoniously quit just before the summer break while second rider Valentino Rossi recently announced his retirement from the sport.
Meanwhile, Darryn Binder, riding for SRT under the Petronas Sprinta Racing banner in Moto3, is tipped to make the jump directly to the MotoGP class. However, Raul Fernandez, who did express interest in joining SRT, is still locked into a KTM contract which gives him a path to the KTM Tech3 MotoGP team under Herve Poncheral.
From the report, Yamaha has offered SRT two ‘B’ MotoGP race bikes, effectively with technology two or three season behind, as opposed to the full works YZR-M1 and the ‘A’ bike ridden by Quartararo in the 2020 season. paultan.org has reached out to both Petronas and SRT for confirmation and will update this article if details are received.
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So no thank you to me for the heads up?
Anyway, wrong understanding of the article, Mohan.
Petronas is pulling the sponsorship of SRT as a whole starting next year.
Because of this, SRT will shut down its Moto3 and Moto2 effort to concentrate on just the MotoGP team as the budget has been severely diminished.
Another wrong info.
Morbidelli has never ridden A spec Yamaha bike. Always B spec including this year.
If SRT takes Yamaha offer, they are clearly stupid. Using B bikes next year, they are effectively using bikes in 2022 season technologically ‘older’ than the bikes used in this year’s competition.
SRT should dump Yamaha for giving them A or B spec bike!. SRT should go to Suzuki as 2nd private team.
Suzuki will not provide more than two bikes
Tutup kedai last. 2-3yr old spec m1, buang masa makan asap.
Some will say padan muka to SRT, because in the year 2021, there was no Malaysian rider entered, either in Moto3, Moto2 and of course in MotoGP…
Agreed with all the comments above – SRT got shafted by Yamaha full stop. A suggestion perhaps? Enter the more realistic but cheaper and more competitive racing of World Superbikes. Motogp is starting to look like a manufacturers’ racing ground, where only the works’ teams get the best and everyone gets second best.
yamaha trying to short change SRT!
make no sense for Petronas to continue sponsor
better PETRONAS/SRT JV with Suzuki as factory team
But why,they only want to concentrate on F1? what happen if Max win the championship, they going to leave merc team also ?
SRT should get Shell Malaysia as their sponsor.
Shell is also the Malaysian MotoGP’s title sponsor, so would make sense. A yellow and white bike would look different than others.
That will never happen. Petronas’s participation in sponsoring SRT was partly due to political pressure. Shell on the other hand will only be interested in manufacturers and the sponsorship is tied to a factory deal and as the official lubricants partner to Ducati. SRT Is not a manufacturer.