There are few co-drivers that transcend and achieve the fame of a driver but Fabrizia Pons is one of them. Sitting beside Michèle Mouton in the Group B days, the duo came oh-so-close to taking the WRC Championship in 1982 and becoming the first women duo to achieve the feat.
That record is still up for grabs some 37 years later and equally, Pons is still in the co-driver’s seat. Gone is the front line competition and back is a career in the FIA Historic Rally Championship. There she rallies a beautiful example of a Lancia Delta Integrale 16V with a driver ‘Lucky’ – the same driver she came to international attention during 1979 and 1980.
For Pons, the allure of rally is still there and the historic competition catches her attention.
“Four years ago I started with Gigi and now we are doing 13 rallies a year. It is my life, I enjoy it, I like it!” Pons said to RacerViews.
“The rallies now are much shorter so I am not busier than I was in the WRC days but I am as busy.”
Her career spanned beyond Mouton, winning the 1997 WRC Rally Monte Carlo alongside Piero Liati in a Subaru Impreza WRC, she has sat alongside Ari Vatinen in WRC competition and since her front line career ended, she has also sat beside the likes of Hayden Paddon and Miki Biasion in other events.
But her post WRC career has been far more than about driving, proving to be a driving figure in other rallying initiatives, particularly for women.
She worked with the FIA and the Women and Motor Sport Commission creating a culture and the assistance to progress more women through motorsport. She left the commission because she didn’t have the time to dedicate and achieve to her own standards and certainly left a very positive legacy for the future of the sport in that area.
But the adventures of rallying, and the days of Group B still are large in her mind. Her passion and enthusiasm for the sport and the era are evident as she shows her Italian flair and passion for the sport.
When asked of memories of the sport, she finds it impossible to pick individual moments.
“All my career is like a dream. If I look behind, I look 40 years ago and everything is so nice.
“The Group B was fantastic. As fast as I like. There was nothing else. There was less discotheque and less everything and so everyone came to watch the rally. The cars were dreams. You were going so fast. It was so nice.”
Beyond the cars though, she speaks fondly of the rallies. Monster rallies where the long days were testing the drivers limits of concentration and the co-drivers abilities to not make errors.
Pons gives a slight insight to why it suited her and Mouton.
“The rallies were also such big adventures.
“This was an advantage for us. Women don’t have the physical strength of a man but we keep going, always. Men, just stop. So this is why we were so successful!”
It was also this experience that helped her become successful in the Dakar rallies, competing five times, taking third in 2005 with Jutta Kleinschmidt.
One could only imagine the stories that would come out over a long night of red wine and good food but for us, we only had a couple minutes to cover a life time of competition. She mentions her close friendship with Michèle Mouton, that went beyond the cars, even back then where she jokes that they had their babies at the same time. Their friendship still endures.
For the record, Pons and Lucky would finish second in the Ypres Las Vegas Historic Rally some 90 seconds behind the winner, a BMW of Ypres debutantes Syx/Vanrobaeys.
Win or not, though her colour and passion are still easy to find in what she still calls a “nice, big and huge adventure.”
The RacerViews info
By Sam Tickell
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