Jaume Betriu, one of the top enduro riders in Spain and a twice Dakar Rally competitor, will trade in his bike seat for the passenger’s seat of a Can-Am Maverick. On Monday, Pons Rallysport announced Betriu will serve as Eduard Pons‘ navigator starting for the Baja España Aragón on 21/22 July.
“As the main novelty in the team, the experienced moto rider Jaume Betriu will sit on the right to perform the duties of co-driver,” reads a team post. “The first training sessions we did a few weeks ago in Portugal gave good results, so we will continue to get to know each other to improve our pace.”
Betriu is an eight-time Spanish Enduro Champion, scoring a title each year between 2015 and 2022 in either the Enduro 2 or Enduro 3 classes. Prior to this stretch, he was a motocross rider who won the 2012 Spanish Cross-Country Championship.
In 2020, he began racing regularly in the FIM Enduro World Championship, finishing second in E3. Another runner-up came the following year with podiums in every race, while his 2022 campaign was affected by a preseason injury.
He started looking towards rally at the end of 2018, and a runner-up among rookie riders at the 2019 Merzouga Rally pushed him to pursue the legendary Dakar Rally. Riding solo in the Malle Moto class with support from FN Speed Team, he finished fourteenth overall as the best performing newcomer. Betriu returned in 2021 and improved to twelfth.
Pons is racing the World Rally-Raid Championship calendar to prepare for his Dakar Rally début in 2024. He ran the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge with Mónica Plaza as his co-driver, though the latter has primarily competed at Dakar as navigator for her father Manolo Plaza. Pons finished twelfth in the T3 category at Abu Dhabi.
