Rich Energy have ordered British superbike team OMG Racing to remove all of the company’s branding on supposed legal grounds.
The ever-controversial energy drinks brand announced the end of the partnership with OMG Racing, which began in 2020, in July.
The team however stated that they had never entered such a partnership with owner William Storey or his company, only the company that holds the distribution and sales rights for the products, RichOMG Limited.
Storey then detailed the series of events that led to the announcement from his company that the deal with OMG had come to an end.
“OMG spent months prevaricating and not engaging with our lawyers. Our due diligence on them also threw up some rather worrying facts which we availed them of. They didn’t respond,” he told Superbike.co.uk, quoted by Planet F1.
“It became clear that they could not conclude the deal we discussed in Nov 21. We spent many months waiting for them which was a waste of time.
“They could not do a deal and our corporate partners indicated they were not appropriate to be involved with the brand.
“We then heard first-hand from people in the paddock that OMG had been misrepresenting their position with Rich Energy and slandering the owners; this rendered their position tenuous at best.”
A month on, Storey’s company have now claimed that their lawyers have requested that the superbike team remove all Rich Energy branding.
“Our lawyers have requested OMG Racing remove all RICH Energy branding,” the Rich Energy account tweeted.
“The team accept they have no contract with RICH Energy nor rights to use our name. We expect to be enforced ahead of the Cadwell Park round.
“British Superbike Championship & their owners are aware.”
OMG Racing have yet to respond to the above statement and have retained all of their Rich Energy branding for the race weekend at Thruxton.
It is, of course, not the first time that Storey and co have entered a dispute with a racing team, with their partnership with Haas F1 team coming to a similarly messy ending back in 2019.
After the company became the team’s title sponsor at the start of that campaign, Storey announced the end of that deal ahead of round nine in Austria due to poor performance.
The other shareholders of the energy drinks brand stated the tweet came from a “rogue individual,” Storey, who was removed as CEO, and maintained that the partnership was to continue.
Soon afterwards though, the two parties split.