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Just two days on from ending its interminable wait for a first premier-class podium in two decades, Aprilia is embarking on a two-day test that may be every bit as important as the Silverstone weekend – as new signing Maverick Vinales samples the Noale factory’s MotoGP bike at Misano.
Vinales, Aprilia’s biggest MotoGP signing yet, wasn’t supposed to get to sample the bike until the 2022 pre-season, but his dramatic mid-season split with Yamaha has offered him an opportunity for a head start.
“I think there’s a lot of expectation,” Aprilia tech chief Romano Albesiano admitted to MotoGP.com the week prior to the test. “We expect to have good performance on the bike, and also it’s very interesting to check the level of the bike with a rider like Maverick, and compare with the performance of Aleix, who is taking a lot of results from this bike.”
Vinales’ whole MotoGP career so far has been spent on inline-four-engined bikes, so the V4-powered RS-GP will be something new.
But there has long been a curiosity on what the Spaniard can do on a bike that’s less smooth than the M1 he never quite fully gelled with.
And Espargaro – whose MotoGP experience includes a thoroughly successful 2014 on a Forward Yamaha derived from an older-spec M1 – believes there shouldn’t be much of a culture shock for Vinales anyway, because of how the RS-GP has evolved.
“It’s been a long time since I rode the Yamaha, the Forward Yamaha, but sincerely our RS-GP ’21 is the most close bike I’ve ever had to the Forward Yamaha. Sincerely,” Espargaro said.
“Maybe he [Vinales] will have to adapt especially to the first touch of the throttle, the connection of the engine, it’s something that I worked very hard in the last two years, with the engine engineers and also with the electronic engineers, to make it softer, but at the same time to have the maximum torque available as soon as possible because I like to feel torque immediately.
“So, I worked very hard on this and I think he will like this.
“I think the downforce on the RS-GP ’21 is something that he will have to adapt [to] because I also had to do it at the beginning of the season, if we compare with the previous bikes. But overall, I think he will feel okay. He will feel straight away good.
“Also the test team, that he will test in Misano, I know every single person, I did some tests with them, and sincerely it’s a very strong team, the test team of Aprilia this year is very, very strong, so I’m sure he will be very happy as soon as he jumps on the bike.”
Aprilia has already tested with a big-name newcomer this year in Andrea Dovizioso, who even briefly signed up as its test rider.
But while Dovizioso repeatedly emphasised the exploratory nature of his testing programme at the time, Vinales’ RS-GP baptism is bound to be different, in terms of both demands and expectations. There is, after all, no contract decision to be made – the commitment is already there.
What the test might determine is how soon Vinales is back racing in MotoGP – although it’s hard to see any reason why he shouldn’t join Espargaro in Aragon already (which Espargaro expects), and then go on to benefit from his test experience in the two Misano races.
“I would lie if I told you there was no chance to see him racing this season,” Aprilia’s motorsport boss Massimo Rivola told The Race during the British GP weekend.
“Hopefully we will get good weather [in the Misano test], and after that we’ll decide together what’s good to do. Let’s see if a wildcard could be an option, if a replacement could be an option.
“I would love to see him racing, because when you start racing you see where you really are, you get more info about the bike you prefer. It also helps us to study the rider – where they are good or not, their characteristics in general, what they like on the bike.”
