CLASSIC RACER IN DETAIL
offered Sito a place in his factory Suzuki team, but in spite of top 10 finishes in his first three races, it proved to be a poor decision to accept it. A combination of difficulty in adapting his high-turn speed riding style to the 500 class as well as the Suzuki’s declining competitiveness and reliability saw Sito’s best result just seventh at Le Mans, but a series of crashes left him riding injured for a good part of the season. So for 1986 Sito returned to the 250GP class, for which he managed to land a ride on a factory Honda NSR250 similar to the one on which Freddie Spencer had won the 250cc world title the previous season. It was a wise decision, and supported by Campsa, Spain’s then largest petroleum company, Pons finished second in the world championship after a season-long battle with Carlos Lavado on the factory yamahayzr250, scoring eight podiums and two victories in Yugoslavia and – yes, Belgium to finish as top Honda rider. But the following year, he won just one race and was only third in the world series behind German riderstoni Mang and Reinhold Roth, both on Hondas similar to his own. At 28 years of age, Sito Pons was now aware that time was running out for him to realise his ambition to become Spain’s first 250cc world champion. But after finishing on the podium in the first two races of the year, he once again won the Spanish GP, this time at Jerez, the first of four victories in a season which saw him finish on the podium 11 times, en route to clinching the world title just 10 points ahead of Juan Garriga. The careers of both of them would be intertwined for the next four years. With his confidence boosted by this second world crown, Pons then decided to try again to make his mark in the 500GP class in 1990 with a Honda NSR500. But even with the help of Antonio Cobas, who had played a key role in his two world title victories, Sito found it hard to tame the fiery NSR, and could only finish tenth in the championship in 1990, and fourteenth in 1991. At the end of that season he finally decided to retire to begin a new career as a team manager, first with the young Alex Criville as his rider, whom he saw as his successor. Over the next two decadesteam Pons became a staple member of the GP paddock, and in due course Sito became President of the team’s association IRTA. Team Pons riders down the years have included Carlos Checa, Max Biaggi,troy Bayliss, Alberto Puig, Loris Capirossi, and Alex Barros before he switched to the Moto2 series in which in 2013Team Pons led Pol Espargaró to the title of Moto2 World Champion. On the 30th anniversary this year of the first of his two world championships, Sito Pons shows no signs of wanting his long career in GP racing to end…