2007 Foggy Petronas plans unknown, MotoGP welcome.
The Foggy Petronas Racing team is still waiting for its founding sponsor to reveal what it wants to happen after the end of the 2006 World Superbike season, which will mark the final year of the present Petronas contract.
"2006 is the final year of the contract, so we're still waiting to find out from Petronas as to what they want to do," told boss Carl Fogarty told Crash.net. "Obviously they've put a lot of money into the last five-years, so it'd be nice if they carry on with us, but we don't know yet.
The Foggy Petronas Racing team is still waiting for its founding sponsor to reveal what it wants to happen after the end of the 2006 World Superbike season, which will mark the final year of the present Petronas contract.
"2006 is the final year of the contract, so we're still waiting to find out from Petronas as to what they want to do," told boss Carl Fogarty told Crash.net. "Obviously they've put a lot of money into the last five-years, so it'd be nice if they carry on with us, but we don't know yet.
"They've got a lot of issues to sort out in F1 at the moment, so we're waiting to find out if they want to carry on, stop, go to MotoGP or whatever..."
When pressed further about a possible MotoGP move, Foggy stated that he would "love" to take his team to grand prix racing, but that he would want to be running proven machinery - backed by Petronas - rather than attempting to build a new bike again.
"I'd love (to go to MotoGP) obviously, but it depends what package it is," explained the Brit. "I mean at this late stage now, it'd be very hard for me to believe that (Petronas) could make a bike to go racing in MotoGP in 2007. The only way they could do it is if they wanted to be a sponsor of a bike - but yeah, if they wanted to go, I'd love to go.
"I'd like to go with bikes I know we could win on though. That would be the key thing for me. I've enjoyed doing what we're doing (in WSBK), but it's been difficult running around knowing we're not going to win. I don't like that at all. I'm about winning, that's what my whole life has been about.
"So it's been frustrating a lot of times, because I want to win races, and so to carry on again and go to MotoGP - where it's probably even tougher - then I'd want (Petronas) to be letting me use bikes that I know could win races. But I'd love to go, for sure," he concluded.
The FP1 has taken pole positions and podium finishes during its three-years in World Superbike competition, but suffers from a 100cc engine capacity disadvantage compared to its 1000cc competition due to the technical rules (which have since changed) at the time of the FP1's homologation.
"The engine guys are pretty confident they can increase the horsepower - more revs, more power sort of thing - for next season, although that's not the area we're really weak in," said Carl of the FP1.
"Where we lose a lot is the torque out of the corners, with it being a 900cc engine, but with the rules the way they are it's going to be difficult to get any more torque out of this bike. So we have to try and make more power at the top end and get it riding better out of the corners.
"I think there's going to be different throttle bodies on the bike, a different cooling package, there's things we are working on all the time - we'll try different air boxes and different cams at the next test in Australia.
"Hopefully, by the start of the 2006 season, the engine will be strong enough to get into the top ten."
Steve Martin and class rookie Craig Jones will ride for Foggy Petronas Racing next season.
Foggy is currently running a competition, with a selection of racing related prizes - including a PETRONAS FP1 road bike - on offer. Visit www.nokiaFPR.com to take part.