New seamless gearbox on Aprilia's testing list
As they say, there is no rest for the wicked. Having tested at Mugello and Le Mans before the Spanish Grand Prix, Aprilia is back on track at the Circuit of Catalunya as it prepares for its all-important home race at Mugello.
Both Aleix Espargaro and Sam Lowes were on track on Tuesday, and again today [Wednesday], with a new seamless gearbox among the items on the test list, as the factory seeks to boost the acceleration of its RS-GP racer.
One of Espargaro's common complaints since joining the Noale factory last November is the machine's lack of drive on corner exit, where it loses significant ground to other manufacturers.
This has made the opening to the year's five MotoGP races complicated for the Aprilia men. While strong and consistent on new rubber, the machine is not able to exploit the extra grip of new tyres, making it a struggle to hold station early in the race.
Along with the new transmission, Espargaro and Lowes worked on different electronics strategies to enable more power in the lower part of the machine's rev range.
"Today I focused on the electronics," explained Espargaro, a retirement when holding a strong top ten position at Le Mans. "We tried many things to understand if we had some power in the bottom, because what we're missing the most, at especially the beginning of the race, we have more grip from the tyre, I cannot use it because we're limited by power.
"The bike doesn't accelerate. The engineer say we have more power but we are not using it under 12,000 RPM. We're trying to use it and understand how to use more power in the bottom.
"Tomorrow we have new pieces to try. We have a new swingarm, a new fairing, because I didn't try it since Qatar. We have many things. For me the most important thing is to improve the feeling with the bumps and to get better acceleration."
On whether the seamless would eradicate some of those acceleration issues, he added, "The seamless can be a little better in the high when you change for the next gear, maybe it's a little bit easier. So yeah, finally the speed is better. But the pure acceleration from the bottom, I don't think this can improve."
Meanwhile, Lowes explained the new transmission is useful at a track like the Circuit of Catalunya, where short straights necessitate the need to short-shift up through the gears. He too explained the need to work through electronics strategies in order to smoothen the power delivery in the low rev range.
"We had a new gearbox this morning which was good," he said on Tuesday evening. "That'll be the direction for two or three races time. It's just a bit faster change, not so much on the backshift, but it's good. Especially here, there are a lot of places where you short shift. It's a good step.
"That'll be a good step for us. Our gearbox is already quite good but I think we're a bit behind. Everyone has made a bigger step, so this will bring us up to their level again. Obviously that helps with acceleration as well.
"We're still missing a bit on the bottom [end of the RPM range]. On a MotoGP bike you hardly ever have one-to-one connection because you've got so much power. So we're trying to manage the power differently, so when we've got low RPM, it doesn't come in in a big way.
"It's something both riders are working on. Some of the installation stuff, me a little more. Aleix is also trying stuff so it's going in the right way. I definitely felt in some of the slower corners it's a bit easier to get on with a bit more push. Before we had nothing and then a push.
"It always seemed to come at the wrong time and then you'd have a lot of shaking. Both of us give a little [throttle] and then everything because we don't feel enough push. Then it catches up with you. You say you've got too much power but it's the way that it comes in. We're working on that a lot, especially for this race, because it's so hard on tyres."
