Ai Ogura and Sergio Garcia will form the rider line-up of new Moto2 squad MT Helmets-MSI for the 2024 season after the team purchased the assets of Pons Racing.
MT Helmets-MSI took over Pons’ team after team owner Sito Pons elected to shutter his historic operation after missing out on a chance to re-join the MotoGP field, the new organisation, which currently competes in the Moto3 world championship, originally keen to bring lightweight class rider Diogo Moreira into the series before he elected to join Italtrans in Moto2 instead.
The outfit, which competes in Moto3 with Honda machinery, announced on Friday that Ogura, who currently competes for the Honda Team Asia squad as a Honda-contracted rider, will be joined for its maiden intermediate class campaign by Garcia, who will remain with the team having competed with Pons in 2023.
Ogura will remain contracted to Honda despite switching away from the team linked closely to the Japanese marque, Ogura the next in line to join its premier class program when he is ready.
“We are very satisfied with the rider duo we have set up for next season,” said MT Helmets-MSI Team Principle Teo Martin.
“Sergio Garcia and Ai Ogura have a lot of riding quality and will be part of the Top10 in the intermediate category.
“We are confident that in 2024, we will be able to do a good job and we hope to achieve good results together with them”.
MT Helmets-MSI currently sit seventh overall in the Moto3 teams championship thanks to the efforts of Moreira and Malaysian ace Syarifuddin Azman.
Ogura and Garcia meanwhile are currently 11th and 13th overall in the Moto2 riders standings, the former recently getting back to front-running form after starting the season injured while the latter has shown impressive progress in his maiden season in the series having fought GasGas Moto2 racer Izan Guevara for the 2022 Moto3 title.
