2021 was, if nothing else, a weird year in the world of motorsport. Nevertheless, this year proved to be one for the history books for Motul and its partners, with several new partnerships and many glorious victories. These are the Motul teams favourite moments of the year.
Romain Grabowski, head of brand, Motul
The best memory for me was our participation in the 24 Hours of Le Mans with the Glickenhaus team. In advance, when we signed the collaboration between both companies in spring, most people didn’t give the team a lot of chances to even finish this tough 24-hour endurance race. This was competition at the highest level with a completely new car and team. From our side we have a lot to offer.
We have earned our stripes in endurance racing, and we are committed to performance and technology and the preparation of the cars, the choice of drivers and we had our media support team in place. At a certain moment we felt like all the lights were green and that we had a very nice project going. Besides the nice, human side of this story with Jim and Jesse Glickenhaus, the racing results proved our gut feeling was right.
The team performed well during the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and overnight they fought the Alpine team for a long time for a third podium spot. Both cars reached the finish line without any major problems. Which, for a first participation at this level of racing, is an accomplishment on its own. We think this is a good partnership and a good story for both brands, and we’re looking forward to the future.
Egor Parienko, head of business, PCMO
The highlight of the year for me was the launch of the newest generation of our flagship 300V range at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. On the professional side, this event was a culmination of over 20 months of work by a very dedicated team of colleagues across the world. Despite lockdowns and remote work, raw material shortages and even the postponement of the race itself, we persevered and presented the fully revamped 300V in full strength: a lubricant with the widest range of viscosities on the market, innovative chemistry, higher performance, and applicable to the broadest fleet of cars.
On a more personal side, I really cherished the opportunity to finally meet colleagues in person, to spend some time together, to be energised by the camaraderie and teamwork, as well as a chance to enjoy the event with a group of people who really love what they are doing.
Anton Malyshev, head of business, Powersport
One of the best memories I’ve experienced this year was in the Ural region, home of the Ural Motorcycle factory in Russia. I travelled with two friends on our Ural sidecars, simply with our gear and sleeping tents. We lived a perfect experience as we had had our photographer with us, who is preparing a video which will be released in January. The video will be about the preparation and how to run-in your Ural motorcycle properly, riding this tough 1,500 km trip through the wild off-road terrain of the Dyatlov pass. We drove all the way up north to Solikamsk, and then returned. I travelled with two friends, our photographer Bartek who was stranded in Russia after the shooting of the Silk Way Rally and Dmitry Khitrov who organises the Baikal Mile.
On the road back, we found a strange place where people say they observed a lot of paranormal activity, including aliens. For us it was an interesting place at the end of our adventure trip, and we will include it in the video. At the end of our trip, we only needed to replace the oil in the Ural engines, so basically that shows how to properly run-in your Ural engine [laughs].
Secondly, being at the EICMA show in Italy, we noticed the travel and off-road trend by the presence of a lot of adventure models. For me it shows, people don’t longer want to be in confinement anymore, and they prefer to discover the world.
Raf Hectors, editorial director, Motul Media Crew
Once again, a lot of events had to be organised without an audience, which is a real pity for the sport, the athletes and the organisers. The Endurance World Championship victory of the Suzuki Yoshimura SERT team was one for the history books, though. For me, the success of this partnership was written in the stars, as I’ve been following all these brands for decades now. Suzuki always had a winning engine and frame.
If you add the Yoshimura performance and the lubrication by Motul, plus a team filled with experience both in engineering and support, they simply had to win the championship. Last but not least, let’s not forget the drivers who made all this happen. The fact one of the pilots is Belgian makes it even better for me. I still remember Xavier Siméon started karting at his early age; nice to see such an evolution!
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