After the victory in Texas, Maverick Vinales’ Aprilia had to settle for seventh place in Jerez. Teammate Aleix Espargaro, however, suffered a fall which forced him to return to the pits without points for the MotoGP rider standings. A bitter weekend for the Noale manufacturer which, despite having demonstrated great potential, is still lacking in terms of consistency of performance.
Aprilia is missing the last step
Aprilia Racing’s chief engineer, Romano Albesiano, has done a great job in recent years. The RS-GP has become a highly coveted prototype, unlike a few seasons ago, when not even the riders coming from Moto2 wanted to gamble. Having reached the pinnacle of MotoGP, the difficult thing is to stay there. “Overall I’m satisfied with the performance, but we need to be better at managing variable situations, as happened here, because we ruined the qualifying weekend. I knew the forecast was for rain on Saturday morning in qualifying. We need to be better at managing these things… Stability, consistency of performance, that’s what we need to find“.
To aim for the MotoGP title you need to be one step ahead of Ducati, not only in terms of the evolution of the bike, but also inside the garage. Then it is the drivers who have to make the difference. “Choices, knowledge of the bike’s reaction and perhaps riders who adapt a little earlier. Knowledge of rubber, because compared to other teams we started studying rubber, but we started a little later. So in certain things we still have to catch up“, underlined Romano Albesiano to Motosan.
Head to head with KTM
Can the Noale company become the second power in the championship? “Journalists make these rankings, we don’t make them. I’m just saying that last year, and this year too, Aprilia won races against KTM. So I don’t know if KTM is Ducati’s main rival. For Maverick it is essential to find the balance between the way the front and rear tires work. KTM is definitely a reference. I think we are at a good level and we are certainly not yet able, as I said before, to overtake the others at the start. The drivers ask us to improve the start“.
Photo Aprilia
