Petronas extends BMW-Sauber deal

The new BMW-Sauber team have extended their lucrative sponsorship deal with Malaysian Oil company, Petronas. Petronas will stay on as teams principal sponsor until 2009, despite BMW's buy-out of Sauber, which instantly reduced their profile within the team.

Petronas' name has appeared in the official title of the Sauber team, since 1995, while that sponsorship deal also saw the customer Ferrari engine rebadged in their honour.

BMW motorsport chief, Mario Theissen was pleased to seal his first major sponsorship deal as the head of a Formula One team.
"We are delighted to have such a strong partner for our Formula One project. We are building on a longstanding association between Petronas and the previous Sauber team. Petronas is a major player above all in Asia, which is a very significant growth market for BMW too."

BMW-Sauber also announced their 2006 car will be launched in Valencia on January 16 and 17.