Aleix: Dovi is my favourite rider!

Aleix Espargaro has raced against the likes of Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, Dani Pedrosa and Marc Marquez - not to mention his own brother Pol - during his time in MotoGP.

But Aleix says his favourite rider is Andrea Dovizioso, whose career path at Ducati provides an inspiration for Espargaro to keep fighting at Aprilia.

Espargaro joined Aprilia in 2017 after racing for Pramac, Aspar, Forward (where he took his only MotoGP podium to date) and the official Suzuki team.

The Spaniard has been Aprilia's top rider for the past three seasons, also achieving the RS-GP's best result to date of sixth place on three occasions (a feat matched once by current team-mate Andrea Iannone).

However, Espargaro is yet to finish higher than 15th in world championship at Aprilia and the factory remains lodged at the bottom of the six-strong constructors' standings.

Dovizioso joined Ducati in 2013, when the factory's MotoGP project was in crisis following the failure to succeed with Valentino Rossi.

Things initially got even worse, with Dovizioso's debut season on the Desmosedici (alongside Nicky Hayden) marking the only year Ducati has failed to finish on the rostrum.

But the arrival of Gigi Dall’Igna, ironically from Aprilia, helped kickstart the factory's recovery and Dovizioso was rewarded for the earlier struggles with his first win for Ducati in 2016 before fighting for the title until the final round of 2017.

The Italian has remained 'best of the rest' behind Marc Marquez for the past three seasons, winning a total of 13 races for Ducati after enduring a six-year drought following his lone 2009 Honda victory.

"I always say to Aprilia it's not good to change the riders every season. I always give the same example, as Dovi is my favourite rider on the grid and how [Ducati] worked in the last years for me is the clever way and I hope this stability will also bring better results in Aprilia," Espargaro said.

"[Dovizioso] is my favourite rider. No doubt," he added. "I always said that because everybody talks about Marquez, sometimes Vinales, Valentino… but for me, what Dovi is doing is impressive. Second in the championship every single year.

"He started with a Ducati that was not that fast and year-by-year he improved the bike and he had Iannone, Petrucci, Lorenzo – very fast riders at his side. Maybe they beat him in a couple of races, but nobody was able to beat him in a full season and this is what counts.

"So the way he works, the way he is as a person, the patience. He's never super happy, never super unhappy, so this stability in general I think is very important - and I don’t have it!" Espargaro smiled. "I have to say I've improved [since becoming a father]. But he's still much better than me!"

Espargaro now hopes to eventually emulate Dovizioso's success by giving Aprilia its first podium in the four-stroke MotoGP class.

"The easiest thing would be to change team and try to fight for the podium. But the nice thing and the thing that I would like is to put Aprilia on the podium as [Dovizioso] did with Ducati," Espargaro said.

"When he arrived at Ducati it was super far and look at the level of the bike right now. He was close to 300 points this year. This is unbelievable. The problem is that the best rider in history is there, so second in the championship is like a title."

Rivola brings F1 ideas to Aprilia

While Dall’Igna played a crucial role in Ducati's MotoGP recovery, Aprilia made a key management signing of its own for the 2019 season in the form of Massimo Rivola, who arrived from F1 to take on the role of Aprilia Racing CEO.

"I think Massimo was not able to do everything he wants [yet] because when you arrive in a new place you need to understand how it works and an intelligent person like Massimo, they listen a lot, they wait, they are patient," said Espargaro.

"So this needs more time, but the way he arrived and the impact on the first season, I'm very happy.

"The team is a lot more serious, the garage is ten times more professional than in the other seasons and I think we are changing the image. So right now, what we have to change is the competitiveness of the bike and the results.

"But it's coming, because in just the last two months more engineers have arrived than in the last ten years in Aprilia! So I think in the future we will see the changes.

"I'm optimistic," Espargaro added. "Looks like we are on the right way. Two or three engine guys have arrived, two aerodynamic guys have arrived, another frame guy has arrived.

"So more than six new people from very competitive places have joined the project, with new ideas. They will help a lot Romano [Albesiano, moved to technical director after Rivola's arrival] and Romano's team will be a lot stronger.

"So no excuses. We were missing that and I hope that the new bike and ideas these guys will bring will help."

Espargaro also confirmed that some F1 methods and ideas are now being implemented by Aprilia.

"We've tried a couple things coming from Formula One, not items on the bike, but the way we work. I think maybe professional is not the word but [F1] is a lot better organised than us.

"In terms of communication we are improving a lot, we are trying things during [the Jerez test] with a radio in my helmet to give better information in the garage to the engineers.

"[The radio is only] inside the garage! Not on the bike. On the bike it's forbidden," he clarified. "But in the garage you can do it and if we have ten engineers around us, [normally] the ten engineers cannot all hear what I'm saying, it's impossible.

"So with this they can listen perfectly to what I'm saying and start to work immediately. They don’t have to read the reports.

"These are all just small details. Obviously, the important thing is that the bike is competitive!

"As Massimo is not an engineer there are some things he cannot improve, not related to him, but all the organisation is related to him and in just ten months I have to say that this team has changed a lot."

The performance of the new bike remains the big question mark hanging over Aprilia's 2020 project - at least until this week's announcement that Andrea Iannone had failed an anti-doping test – since it won't debut on track until Sepang in February.

Espargaro felt such a delay was not acceptable under normal circumstances, given rival manufacturers had all put their prototypes on track by November, but concedes the major overall to the RS-GP and changes put in place by Rivola mean it's not been a normal season.

"As a big factory, as we are, we need to work at the same [timeframe] as the other manufacturers," Espargaro said.

"But we have to be a little bit patient because for 2020 with the arrival of Rivola it looks like we are going to change many things inside of Aprilia - the new bike, many engineers are joining the project - so I give full credit to Aprilia.

"I hope the new bike that will arrive in Malaysia will be much better and I already told them for the next years we have to readjust the timings and the [new] bike has to arrive earlier.

"Because [in 2020] we will have six days of testing with the new bike before the race weekend in Qatar, so it's a little bit in the limit."

Although Aprilia is perceived as the 'smallest' factory in MotoGP, Espargaro highlighted that parent company Piaggio (which also owns Vespa, Gilera, Moto Guzzi, Derbi, and Scarabeo) is more than capable of competing with the other manufacturers in terms of resources.

"What I want to say is that actually Aprilia is very, very big. Piaggio Group is very big. So we have to prove that on the track and I hope that in the future we can change this [perception of being the smallest]."