Espargaro: Aprilia changing “small team” approach

Aleix Espargaro is confident Aprilia is changing its working processes and mentality as he urges the Noale factory to move away from working “like a small team” as it aims to climb the MotoGP grid.

While Espargaro secured an impressive seventh place last time out at Aragon, the Spanish rider has dismissed the result being down to both his strengths at the track which also plays to the advantages of Aprilia’s package.

Espargaro has vented his frustration at Aprilia’s lack of progress in recent weeks but was eager to highlight the changes taking place behind the scenes at the Italian manufacturer as part of its 2020 preparations.

The Spanish rider says his team is bringing in more engineers to support its existing technical team to step up its development strategy to close the performance deficit to the front-running teams.

“I think in the last few years we have worked like a small team and Aprilia is a huge brand and we have to approach it [differently],” Espargaro said. “We cannot think about having good performance for one race but we have to go and think a little bit more towards the future to prepare more and to have an order of priorities.

“It is not just about how you approach one race it is about how to be better in the future, how to prepare the bike, and I think this is something that is changing.

“We have more engineers who were missing because if you want to fight with Ducati, Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki you have to improve the level of the team a lot because they are huge brands with a lot of experience.

“Aprilia has won a lot of titles but not in MotoGP which is the biggest class so I think we are now making that step forward that we didn’t make in the past.”

After joining Aprilia from Suzuki in 2017, Espargaro has been disappointed by the lack of progress having notched up the Noale factory’s best-ever MotoGP result in the modern era of sixth place on his debut. Espargaro has finished in sixth place on two further occasions (Aragon 2017 and 2018), with his best result this season being seventh place at Aragon.

“The reality is that we are not very competitive this year and after three years it is not easy to still be passionate and positive,” he said. “But it looks like things are changing this year a lot and especially for 2020 a lot of engineers are coming to help all the engineers we have at Noale. I think that the way we are working and approaching next season is completely different to my last three seasons at Aprilia.

“I am confident and I really can’t wait to try to new bike to see how we can improve because I think that okay Aragon was a good race but we just finished seventh and this has to become something we can do regularly, fighting for top 10s, so I can’t wait.

“I think Aprilia, Piaggio, and myself deserve to be closer to the top guys and fighting with them for the important positions.”