Yamaha Factory MotoGP Team Loses Another Sponsor

Dennis Chung
by Dennis Chung

Yamaha’s factory MotoGP team has lost a major sponsor for the second year in a row. Malaysian oil and gas company Petronas will not be extending its sponsorship agreement with the Yamaha team, ending a three-year relationship.

Last year, the Yamaha team lost the title sponsorship of automobile manufacturer Fiat. For the past year, Petronas was the largest brand to adorn the factory Yamaha racebikes, as illustrated from the photo above of Ben Spies riding the 100cc 2012 race bike at the post-season test in Valencia, Spain.

The team’s next most prominent sponsors are Yamaha’s Indonesian subsidiary YMKI and Yamalube, both part of Yamaha’s overall corporate family.

Yamaha will need to find some new sponsorship money soon, hopefully from outside of the company itself. Factory riders Spies and Jorge Lorenzo‘s contracts both end after the 2012 season, and Yamaha will likely want to re-sign one or both of them, while Andrea Dovizioso is waiting in the wings with the Tech 3 Yamaha satellite squad for a spot on a factory team.

Dennis Chung
Dennis Chung

Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.

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