The quest for stability at the heart of APRILIA’s latest developments

While Yamaha and Honda were testing a new engine, the European brands followed a slightly less ambitious roadmap on Monday, on the occasion of the first of the three post-course tests of the season. However, the stake was no less important on their scale, because apart from Ducati who must above all confirm his supremacy, KTM and Aprilia have a delay to fill.

The Italian manufacturer, whose season is already widely complicated by the repeated injuries of Jorge Martín, has set himself the number one objective of improving the stability of his motorcycle. An overly nervous machine and pilots lacking confidence in braking led to unsatisfactory performances at this stage of the championship, spoiling the hopes that had been fed thanks to good pre-season tests.

Solving this problem goes through the settings, the engineers having understood that a bad direction has been taken since the start of the season. And this must also rely on equipment, that the workshops of Noale have made sure to provide sufficient quantity for the tests of the moment – those of the test days proper and those led by Lorenzo Savadori, replacing a regular at Martín.

Massimo Rivivola has been very clear about how the manufacturer intends to take advantage of the opportunity that emerges from the absence of its leader pilot, since making his essayer driver drive more than expected to be able to experiment with new things. For his fourth Grand Prix of the year, Savadori therefore ran to Jerez with new parts, then transmitted to Bezzecchi on Monday for the test while additional equipment arrived on Sunday evening to provide the essayer pilot again.

“In my part of the stand, we have a big job because the parts are completely new”, Savadori indicated at the time of the balance sheet for the official MotoGP website, “And we have to make adjustments, that we understand the behavior of the motorcycle. Some of the new things we have tried go in the right direction, so I think we can make big progress with the motorcycle, including for the next Grand Prix.”

For his part, Bezzecchi concentrated on an oscillating arm during the morning of the test, then on a new aero package in the afternoon. “We try changes to the motorcycle to try to gain stability, particularly in braking and acceleration”, he said.

“We tried an oscillating arm that worked rather well. Obviously, we still need to garner the kilometers with because it is quite recent, and we have to analyze the data but it seems interesting”, welcomed Bezzecchi. “I think it’s always a combination of things, so it’s not just the aero or the swing arm, it’s all put together. We have to find the perfect combination.”

Several steps to come

For Paolo Bonora, team manager of the APRILIA factory team, it was a test “Very important”with the hope that the work done can bear fruit at the same time from the next Grands Prix with regard to settings and the swinging arms, then later in the championship with regard to aero since Noale is already preparing the second package which can be approved.

“We focus on improving the stability of the motorcycle, in particular at the entrance to the turns”, explained the manager. “[Il s’agit aussi] Avoid rear instability and give drivers better output stability. We work with the four pilots and we bring hardware equipment, including an oscillating arm for Marco as well as other things to progress. We have worked a lot on electronics, in terms of engine torque behavior, with the main objective of improving stability. “

APRILIA had also set himself other expectations in the work carried out on Monday: to better exploit new tires and thus succeed in qualifying towers, the area in which Marco Bezzecchi has been struggling so far, but also better managing the first part of the race when new gums are associated with a full and heavy tank, then maintain a level of grip as stable as possible during the event.

To carry out all of this work, Bezzecchi was not idle, he who was the most active man in the test with nearly 100 laps on his counter. Savadori held at 67 rpm in total, a technical problem having stopped it in the second half of the day.