The ‘incorrect job’ that led to Marco Bezzecchi’s dismal COTA MotoGP Friday

Aprilia boss Paolo Bonora has explained the “incorrect job” the factory team did that led to Marco Bezzecchi losing much of FP1 at the MotoGP Americas Grand Prix to bike issues.

The Italian manufacturer was expected to have a strong weekend at the Circuit of the Americas, after it sensationally won last year’s Americas MotoGP round with Maverick Vinales.

But the weekend hasn’t so far gone to plan for Aprilia, with its troubles starting from the off in FP1 on Friday.

Marco Bezzecchi immediately encountered an issue with his first RS-GP, which forced him to switch to his second bike.

This then developed a fault, which was fixed, but was also the bike he crashed on halfway through the session.

Forced back onto his number one bike, he was hit by the same issue which affected him at the start of the session.

Aprilia’s Bonora has now explained that Bezzecchi’s bike went into an engine safe mode due low temperatures, which he says was part of a procedural set-up that it must change.

“Not an ideal day, for sure,” he told MotoGP’s world feed on Saturday.

“We started FP1 not in the best way, because we set not in the best way the temperature of the engine.

“There was a diagnostic that protects the engine, so he lost the opportunity to make more laps during FP1.

“But at the end we understand what to do and we hope that something like this never happens again for him because it created some not ideal situations inside the box for him.

“We did not the correct job and probably his crash was also due to this problem.

“No human error at all. They followed the procedure absolutely, but we need to change the procedure.

“So, we set a different temperature to the diagnostic to avoid this kind of problem in the future. For sure, we are still working to fix this so that it never happens again.”

Bezzecchi wasn’t the only Aprilia rider to have encountered this temperature issue within the marque’s stable.

Aprilia’s weekend failed to improve on Saturday morning, with none of its riders escaping Q1.

Bezzecchi was its highest-placed qualifier in 13th, while Trackhouse duo Ai Ogura and Raul Fernandez were 18th and 19th - with the latter crashing during Q1.

Lorenzo Savadori qualified last on the sister factory team Aprilia.