From a press release:

FOGGY PETRONAS RACING MAKE BRANDS APPEARANCE

Foggy PETRONAS Racing will make their first public showing at the Brands Hatch round of the World Superbike championship between July 26th-28th.

Four-times world champion Carl Fogarty and his team will be at the Kent circuit to show off the newly launched Foggy FP1 race bike ahead of their intensive winter testing programme.

The team has rescheduled their race debut for the start of the 2003 season, having initially set a challenging target of racing in the final half of 2002.

Road versions of the Foggy FP1 race bike are being built by PETRONAS in their long-term programme to manufacture the first Malaysian race-bred superbike.

Carl said: “The whole idea of the manufacturing project is to build a road bike based on racing excellence. So it does not really make sense to rush our testing programme, which is also so crucial to the thorough development of the Foggy FP1 road bike, just so that we could have competed in the few remaining races this year.

“Everyone involved in this project wanted to race at the earliest possible opportunity. But we have decided that it was not worth sacrificing the overall aims of the project in order to satisfy the governing body’s deadline.

“I am most disappointed for our two riders, James Haydon and Troy Corser. But they both have multi-year deals and will have a more competitive bike to reward their patience when we do start racing after an extensive testing programme.”

Note: The sport’s homologation rules dictate that an initial 75 road versions of a race bike have to be built by certain deadlines in order for teams to compete in the World Superbike championship.