Aprilia point out a key realisation from Trackhouse partnership

Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola says Raul Fernandez’s switch from the 2023 RS-GP to the 2024 MotoGP machine has made it realise “maybe the bike is more different than we thought”.

Aprilia appeared to make a big step forward with its 2024 RS-GP in the pre-season and hit the ground running at the beginning of the campaign, with Maverick Vinales winning at the Americas Grand Prix.

But as the season has gone on, the Aprilia has gone well in qualifying and sprints, but struggled to challenge at the front of grands prix.

And since Aragon, Aprilia has appeared to have fallen even further off the pace compared to its rivals.

Speaking ahead of last week’s San Marino GP, Rivola believes the change of bike for Fernandez at Trackhouse - who switched to the RS-GP 24 at Silverstone - has revealed just how different this year’s machine is to its predecessor and perhaps explains why it has struggled so much.

“The relationship with Trackhouse is really good,” Rivola said.

“Davide [Brivio] I’ve known for many years and he’s the best team principal we could have in a satellite team.

“So, I trust him a lot in all his experience, in understand the balance of the team.

“So, for sure it’s generally the last couple of weekends are quite disappointing for all the Aprilias.

“But at the same time there are some indications that are coming from, for example, Raul used the 23 bike until a couple of races ago and now he needs to adapt to a bike that is quite different.

“So, maybe the bike is more different than we thought and we need to adjust it more than we thought.

“It’s a learning process and unfortunately we are not maximising absolutely the performance.

“I think the performance of the bike even today is not the one that we saw [previously].

“But in the end, the whole team needs to learn a lot. We are changing the bike quite a lot every year to desperately get to the top and the risk sometimes is to lose the way.”

Such has been Aprilia’s struggles recently this year that it has fallen behind KTM in the constructors’ standings, albeit equal on 234 points.

On what Aprilia needs to look into to boost its form, Rivola added: “There’s not a specific area. I think it’s the understand of how to make the tyres work properly. That is the key.

“At the end, the best performance comes when you use the tyres in the best window.

“So, we need to set the bike for that specific target. Sometimes it’s not easy to replicate, because track layout is something, also different levels of grip, different levels of tarmac, different levels of roughness.

“For example, the micro-roughness of Aragon for us was a disaster in terms of grip.

“So, there are many, many aspects. And the target is to understand what we need from the bike to use it all the time.”