F1: Surprise deal as Petronas become title sponsor of Mercedes GP

The deal is a surprise: Petronas has been involved in motorsport for a long time: it even developed a superbike several years ago - and its name has spent the last season splashed across the, er, lower back of Valentino Rossi and his team.

And for a long time, it has been a major sponsor of the Sauber, then BMW-Sauber team. Under the earlier incarnation, Malaysians gained good work experience with the Sauber team.

But the general expectation was that now the BMW deal was dead, that Petronas would put its financial muscle behind its sister company Proton's efforts.

To be fair, Team Lotus F1 is not really a Proton company: it's run by a few well connected Malaysians and some serious talent amongst the hired help, but it's got the Lotus name and Proton own Lotus engineering and the road and sports car divisions. There were criticisms that state money may be being put into the Lotus team.

And so Petronas may have been scared off by the criticism.

Or it might have decided that it has, at last, the chance to put its name on a car that wins.

So, now the team that was once BrawnGP and had no stickers on their cars will go by the name "Mercedes GP PETRONAS Formula One Team"

The new livery will be formally unveiled in February at the Valencia test, which is when - in theory at least - all teams will roll out their new cars.

The hero of formula one in recent years, Ross Brawn, said "The collaboration of the premium automotive brand Mercedes-Benz and a company as prestigious as PETRONAS gives our team a fantastic base from which to achieve our ambitions of competing at the top level of Formula One and building on the success of 2009 which saw the team achieve the Constructors� and Drivers� Championships. Our plans for the new season are progressing well, as is the development of our 2010 challenger, and we look forward to seeing the car run in the new Silver Arrows and PETRONAS livery at the Valencia test in February.�

But for Petronas there might have been a specific reason for going to Mercedes rather than any other team: the German manufacturer has already made it clear that it has no intention of writing blank cheques and that one of the attractions of Brawn GP is that it had costs under control. For Petronas, that might mean that it got a somewhat better deal that it might have expected from some other leading teams.

And with its name on last year's MotoGP champion, it will be hoping for more of the same.

But there is another thing: there's an increasing buzz that Michael Schumacher has rebuilt his injured neck and is eyeing a return to F1. Ferrari have said they will not stand in his way if he joins another team, despite his extensive consulting role with them. Rumours say that Schumacher has personally told his former bosses at Ferrari that there is "a strong possibility" that he will be in a Mercedes F1 car next year."

Focus, a German magazine, reports that a deal has been done - for one year only and subject to an FIA medical.

With the guaranteed coverage that will provide, even if he's rubbish which isn't likely, Petronas might just have secured the sponsorship profile deal of the next decade.