With the 2025 Goodwood Festival Speed in UK, the Petronas FP1 made a showing on the track. Held annually, the Goodwood festival is a celebration of motorsports, exotic cars and motorcycles and a good chance to get up close with classic and vintage racing vehicles.
Case in point is the Petronas FP1, the short lived collaboration between Petronas and racing legend and multiple world superbike champion (WSBK) Carl Fogarty. The FP1 was supposed to spearhead Fogarty’s WSBK team in the championship in 2003 with riders Troy Corser and James Haydon.
The FP1 was developed by Petronas and Sauber Petronas Engineering initially as the Petronas GP1 prototype to compete in MotoGP, but it was decided to campaign in WSBK instead. However, unfortunate timing saw FIM, motorcycle racing’s governing body, changes the rules to 1,000 cc for any engine configuration while the FP1 was developed under the previous 900 cc/three-cylinder regulation.
This meant the FP1 was not going to be competitive unless the engine capacity was increased or the given completely redesigned to take advantage of the new rule. However, the FP1 was still raced in the 2003 and 2004 seasons, finishing on the podium twice in 2004.
The current provenance of the batch of 150 FP1s produced for homologation purposes remains under a confidentiality agreement. It is known a batch of 60 units from the original 75 homologation motorcycles remains in the UK while 75 units representing the final production run were assembled by the Modenas factory.
In 2017, a company called Momoto emerged, claiming to have a batch of FP1s for sale in Malaysia but no few further news has developed. paultan.org had the opportunity to take the Momoto MM1 out for a run, which you can read about here
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