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.
The post Petronas withdraws Sepang Racing Team sponsorship appeared first on Paul Tan's Automotive News.
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