By January, Essex-based engineering firm MSX International was working flat-out to build the 75 homologation road bikes. The plan was to build the first 75 bikes in the UK before shipping the production process to Malaysia. The 150 limited edition road bikes were expected to cost around £25,000 while cheaper, lower-spec mass market models would later become available. At least that was the plan.
There was finally good news on the race bike front in January with Troy Corser posting times just a second off the lap record during tests at Phillip Island. Foggy himself had a spin on the bike for the first time in a further test in Malaysia where he also revealed that 77 road-going FP1s had finally been homologated by the FIM. Team Foggy Petronas was ready to race.
As the 2003 WSB season got underway at Valencia on 1 March, Team FPR silenced doubters when Troy Corser qualified in fourth place. Admittedly Corser was a Superpole specialist and one fast lap was no real test of a bike's reliability, but it was still impressive. Corser was then running in a comfortable ninth place in the first leg when he crashed out, leaving James Haydon to finish in twelfth place. Race two proved more fruitful for Corser when he finished an impressive seventh. Haydon did not finish the race.
But the rest of 2003 was a nightmare. A catalogue of reliability and overheating problems and a general lack of power meant the bike was never truly competitive. Finishes for both riders were few and far between and in the first nine races they chalked up 17 DNFs between them. At the team's home round at Brands Hatch, Corser failed to finish either leg and Haydon could only manage a dismal 17th and a DNF.
Corser ended the season a lowly 12th, never coming close to the win he predicted after the first round. Haydon's year was even more dismal, parting company with the team after finishing the season 26th equal. Once released from his Petronas contract he gave an insight into what the FP1 was like to ride. "I never managed to get it set to anything I could ride and feel," he said.
In October of 2003, 18 months after the first drawings of the FP1 road bike were revealed, Petronas unveiled the finished machine at Sepang. Prospective buyers were invited to place orders for the £25,000 superbike while the firm revealed plans to build a range of motorcycles.
For the 2004 WSB season, Foggy signed Chris Walker as the replacement for Haydon. He also sacked Eskil Suter, and contracted the engine work out to British-based specialists Ricardo. Fogarty felt the design of the original triple was fundamentally flawed and was responsible for the crippling overheating problems which had plagued the team in its debut year. The switch also had implications for the road bike, forcing its release to be further delayed as the bikes had to be re-engineered. The road bikes were now expected in mid-2004.
It was another setback for the team but there was still a glimmer of hope. The new one-make Pirelli tyre rule was looming in WSB and led to most of the major Japanese factories pulling out. This at least would give the FP1 a better chance against reduced competition.
Chris Walker took full advantage in the opening round at Valencia by handing the team its first podium. It was a fantastic result but was at least partly down to a correct tyre choice on a damp but drying circuit. Walker could only manage seventh in the drier second leg but this was still much better than Troy Corser's results of a DNF and 11th.
Both riders were still having to make do with the old Suter engine as the new motors were not expected until mid-season. But it didn't seem to affect Corser at Misano. He built up a huge lead in the opening leg and looked set to give the team its first race win before Regis Laconi pushed Corser back to second at the flag. That second place remains the FP1's best-ever result.
But there were other moments to celebrate in 2004, one of them being the team's first ever pole position, achieved by Corser in Germany. He repeated the feat in the final round at Magny-Cours. The team had shown sparks of real promise in 2004 with solid top 10 results and those two pole positions but reliability had once again been their undoing. As Chris Walker noted at the end of the season: "I have finished 11th, but I only made one mistake all year. The number of races I haven't finished has been the problem."
Corser finished the season in ninth then parted company with the team. Once released from his contract, he claimed Foggy was, "Not much of a communicator, not a talker and not a team leader," and criticised him for taking too many holidays when he should have been putting more time into running his team.
For 2005, Fogarty signed two new riders, both Australian: former GP winner Garry McCoy and ex-Australian Superbike champion Steve Martin. As part of the team overhaul, Foggy also enlisted Jack Valentine as team manager following the departure of Nigel Bosworth. Valentine had been one half of the V&M team which had enjoyed so much success at the TT, and he immediately set about the task of improving the FP1. By April a new higher-revving engine and a seven-kilo weight reduction helped Steve Martin slash several seconds off his lap times at a Phillip Island test. But when the team turned up at Valencia the following week, both riders dumped the new generation engine and ran with the older model as they claimed the new motor didn't offer any advantages round the tight and twisty track.
By the middle of 2005, a lack of results and progress was taking its toll on Foggy and for the first time he talked about turning his back on team management. While praising his team, sponsors and riders, the four-time WSB champ was not used to being beaten and when McCoy and Martin only managed one 13th place between them from both legs at Silverstone, Foggy admitted he was sick of being beaten.
Steve Martin eventually finished the season in 18th place with Garry McCoy a dismal 22nd. McCoy parted company with the team after a year; Martin's slightly better run of results and his head-down, 'get on with it' attitude had impressed Foggy enough to keep him on for 2006, while he also signed rising British Supersport star Craig Jones.
With the full return of the Japanese factories in WSB this year, the Petronas bikes have been ever more outclassed. Despite Martin displaying once again that the bikes are good for one quick Superpole lap, his two front row starts at Phillip Island and Valencia have so far been the highlight of the season. At the time of writing, the FP1's sheer lack of speed was shown at Monza where Martin qualified 23rd and Craig Jones a dismal 30th and last.
It doesn't look like Team Foggy Petronas is going to bow out on a high. In fact, it could be argued that the team shouldn't be racing at all. WSB rules state that all homologation road bikes should be made available to the public within a year of being approved and, in the case of the FP1, this hasn't happened. The FIM has admitted that if they had received a complaint from another team, it would be hard to justify Team FPR's
presence. But since the Petronas bikes are not seen as a threat, everyone is happy just to have another manufacturer involved in WSB.
The road bike saga continues. Excuses, delays and reliability problems have been rife since the bike was unveiled in 2002. But the official line was that it could not establish a UK dealer network to sell the bikes. In March 2005 the firm announced that the FP1 was available to buy - but there was a hitch. The only dealer stocking them was Malaysian based NAZA Bikers Dream. With no infrastructure in the UK there was little interest from buyers in this country and, as yet, no British owners have been traced. Since then, the trail has gone cold and no-one seems to know what has become of the 150 homologation road bikes.
Despite FPR's lack of success in its five-year history, Foggy remains brim full of confidence in his ability and remains convinced that the only thing which stopped his team winning the WSB title was having the right bikes. With the FP1 headed for a museum after this season and Petronas withdrawing from the sport, Foggy now finds himself with a team and the infrastructure to go racing but he's got no bikes and no sponsor.
Rumours suggest he's been holding talks with Ducati about running a factory WSB or MotoGP team, but no announcement has yet been made.
Five years down the line, the sums don't add up. £30 million in sponsorship, the legendary Carl Fogarty, some of the best riders in the series, the swankiest outfit in the paddock and yet only two pole positions and two podiums to show for it. And we don't have a road bike to ride...
So what really went wrong? Two major factors combined to scupper the FP1 project. The first was the choice to run a three-cylinder engine; the second was the rule change which allowed 1000cc four-cylinder machines to race in WSB. When WSB upped the limit for four-cylinder bikes from 750cc to 1000cc in 2004, the FP1 was outgunned by the bottom-end grunt of the litre bikes. Since the FP1 was homologated as a 900cc bike, Foggy could not build a bigger engine without having to repeat the entire homologation process, and since the original road bikes have still not gone on general sale, this was not an option.
We shouldn't be too hard on Team Foggy Petronas - to design and build a new bike from scratch and to build a team around it to take on the might of the Japanese and Italian factories was never going to be an easy task. Team FPR has put in more than five years of hard work for precious little in the way of results or success. But if we know one thing about Carl Fogarty, it's that he's a fighter - and a fighter who doesn't like being beaten.
