MOTUL PARTNERS WITH WORLD-FAMOUS RACING TRACK LAGUNA SECA

It has one of the most famous turns of any race track in the world – the infamous and fearsome corkscrew. Laguna Seca, near Monterey in California, is home to one of the world’s most iconic circuits. Recently, Motul and Laguna Seca announced an official lubrication partnership. To find out more, we spoke to Nolan Browning, marketing manager for Motul USA.

We’ve signed an agreement as the official oil of Laguna Seca for a three-year term. That’s starting this year, and that’s why we were the presenting sponsor of last weekend’s Hyundai Monterey Sports Car Championship Presented by Motul. The partnership is significant because as Motul USA is based in California, Laguna Seca is our home track. The agreement covers several different events, including the Monterey Historics, which is a bit like the Goodwood Revival. We have about five races each year at Laguna Seca, and we’ll have some branding around the paddock, as well as sponsoring one of their garages. It’s a partnership that will also grow to support the IMSA race at Monterey in the future.

For us, it is such a legendary track and a lot of us grew up playing it on racing games like Gran Turismo. It’s one of the most iconic tracks in the USA and so it makes sense for us to connect with it as we’re there so often. We sponsor multiple series there such as the Trans Am race, as well as Moto America and the Superbikes.

Yeah, we’ll have signage – as you could see in the recent IMSA race – and we’ll have even more over the next couple of years. A lot of it will be more standard. Usually, the signage goes up for a race and then comes down again, but we’ll have it up year-round in a few places.

We’re trying to grow the fan base. And we have plans in the future such as a rally from Los Angeles up to Monterey in partnership with some local garages and partners. We’re doing the same thing for Moto America. We’re involved in King of the Baggers too, which is basically huge V-twin Harley-Davidsons racing at Laguna Seca. It’s a big thing at the moment. It’s growing really wildly. Metric sportbike racing was dying out in the United States, but now when they added the Harley Davidsons, we had almost 150,000 fans at Laguna Seca last year. We even had biker clubs like the Hells Angels coming to watch the race. It’s a completely different culture now.

Yeah, we get certain privileges, such as choosing the starter, so the person who says “drivers, start your engines”. We also had a Motul-branded Pfaff Porsche on display, which has a co-partner of ours called Driveway, a dealership group, and we gave the starting flag position to one of the dealers. We also got to present the trophies, and we had a Motul display in the fan zone.

© Pictures: Jordan Lenssen