Motul to sponsor Marlboro Yamaha.

Yamaha today announced that it will sign an agreement with innovative French lubricant company Motul as sponsor and technical partner to the Marlboro Yamaha Team for 2001.

Motul enjoyed a five-year relationship with Yamaha sponsoring its factory World Superbike Team until the end of last season. It will now switch its support to Yamaha's main GP effort as a sponsor of the Marlboro Yamaha Team.

At the same time, Motul's technical staff will work with Yamaha engineers and provide oil for the development programme of Yamaha's prototype four-stroke racer - code-named OW-M1 - which will be raced in the 2002 MotoGP season.

"Motul has enjoyed many years of technical and racing co-operation with Yamaha which led to World Championships for Christan Sarron, Wayne Rainey and John Kocinski," stated Mr Yves Junne, Vice President of Motul. "We also had tremendous results together in Superbike and Motocross. Motul is proud to announce that an agreement has been reached to be a technical sponsor of the Marlboro Yamaha Team for 2001.

"Our agreement also includes very interesting prospects for joint developments in terms of four-stroke racing lubes to meet Yamaha's future requirements."

Project leader of Yamaha's YZR500 Grand Prix programme, Mr Shuuji Sakurada, added: "We are very grateful to Motul for their support for the 2001 season. They are an innovative company with very high quality products and with a long history in top level motorsport. We are pleased that they will continue to support Yamaha after many years of successful partnership in our previous World Superbike programme. We are used to working with Motul's four-stroke products and so it makes very good sense for us to work with them on the OW-M1 project."

The agreement between the two companies will be signed at the Japanese Grand Prix that opens the 2001 MotoGP season on 8th April at Suzuka.