Carl Fogarty .
By
ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOS BY KEL EDGE
C
arl Fogarty never took the easy route - not as a
racer then, nor as a team owner now. World
Champion seven times in all - four times with
Ducati in World Superbike, twice with Honda in IT
Formula One, and once with Kawasaki in World
Endurance - the 36-year-old Englishman had
seemed set for a comfortable, albeit uncharacteristically unchallenging, retirement after being forced
out of racing through the injuries suffered in his
horrific crash at Phillip Island in 2000. The famous
Fogarty eyes had taken on a softer expression, as
Fogarty glad-handed his way around the world after
n
__ •
his appointment as Ducati's roving ambassador for
the Italian company's World Superbike campaign,
on a three-year contract with options for renewal.
But, once a racer, always one - and last November, the motorcycle world was stunned by the revelation that Fogarty would be returning to the World
Superbike paddocks in 2002, but this time as a
team owner, rather than as a rider. Not, however,
with a satellite Ducati factory team, as had been
widely forecast, but as part owner of a brand-new
marque, in partnership with Malaysia's giant petroleum conglomerate Petronas. Additionally, the
Foggy FP-1, on which work had already commenced, would be derived from the SauberPetronas 990cc three-cylinder prototype unveiled
by the Asian company's Swiss Formula One partners at the Suzuka GP back in April, which, having
been shoehorned into a hastily constructed Harris
chassis, had turned a wheel in public in the hands
of Niall Mackenzie for the first time at the Malaysian
GP in October.
But, instead of going GP racing with this apparently well-advanced project, Petronas had opted to
transfer to the rival World Superbike arena with
Fogarty as the front man, supposedly using a reengineered 900cc version of the 990cc Sauber prototype to conform to current World Superbike
three-cylinder rules - and to develop and market
the street-legal sportbike version of which 150
examples would have to be made in order to
