Maverick Viñales obtained his first victory with Aprilia in MotoGP last Sunday. The rider dominated the weekend of the Americas GP, achieving a result he had long sought. His head mechanic, José Manuel Cazeaux, spoke about the path to this triumph.
The engineer explained to the newspaper AS that the level of the Spanish rider has been there since last year, when he managed to take a decisive step in understanding the bike:
– I think we have had this level since last year in Qatar, when we understood a bit how to ride the 2023 bike. In reality, the Aprilia was a difficult bike for him, with some limits that we could not understand, but we finished very strong, with a wrong tire choice in Valencia. Otherwise, he would have definitely been on the podium in Valencia. In fact, he got the pole position there.
That said, according to Cazeaux, the new RS-GP presented many challenges: ‘In the winter, things got a bit complicated because we had many problems in the tests with the 2024 bike. So, we arrived in Qatar not in the right place. This bike had more potential than the 2023 one, but it has a different balance and in Qatar we understood it, looking at the data, and in Portugal we showed up with modifications on the bike to focus on where we needed to be focused. So, either we don’t understand anything, or we will be strong in all races‘.
