Aprilia had a promising start to the MotoGP season, fighting for podiums and even securing a victory at the GP of the Americas. However, they have struggled to replicate these results in the main races, although they have remained competitive in the Sprint races. Executive Director Massimo Rivola is calling for a reaction, aware of what is going wrong at the moment.
In an interview with Sky Sport MotoGP, the Italian explained that the problem is identified: ‘Since we returned to Europe, there’s a clear trend. An Aprilia is sometimes at the front, performing well in the Sprint, but then in the long race we are not competitive enough from the middle of the race onward. There’s a performance management issue primarily related to tire consumption; we need to focus on this’.
Rivola believes there are two aspects to this problem: ‘I think there’s an issue with tuning, both mechanical and electronic. And also how we manage race weekends. We need more information starting from Friday, even if it means sometimes having to start from Q1’.
The engineer also acknowledged that the gap to the top in the main races is significant and needs to be addressed: ‘We were 40 seconds faster than last year, which is an eternity, but we were still ten seconds off the leader. […]. We’re making some mistakes, or Ducati is performing particularly well since we returned to Europe. They made good use of the Barcelona test, a track with low grip, to make progress. They did well, now it’s up to us. […]. The fact that we didn’t put all the pieces together [at Silverstone] should make us reflect and understand how to improve. The difference is too big; we need to progress’.