Normally, when we come to this point in the MotoGP season, much of the talk around the factory Aprilia team centres on how the bike seems to perform worse on overseas trips and how the riders' potential has been wasted by a series of unexplained problems and random technical failings.
That narrative seems to have been flipped in 2025, though, as a whole series of riders onboard the RS-GP do their best to squander a bike that might just, for the first time in its grand prix career, be a contender for the best machine on the grid at this point in the season.
It's been an Aprilia storyline all year long that the 2025-spec machine has done something of a 180 in terms of its performances. Gone is the super-strength at very specific circuits such as Termas de Rio Hondo, Barcelona, and Lusail, instead replaced by a machine that has upped its level all year round, resulting in maybe fewer chances for dominant victories but a much more consistent season-long performance.
And with that consistency has come a different type of upper limit on Aprilia's performance, one that means that the machine is now realistically the only real threat to Ducati on any given weekend - should Aprilia put everything together and its big Italian rival have just a few little things go against it.
Take the 'Marc Marquez' factor away from Ducati's performance, and surely there's a strong case to argue that the 2025 Aprilia is the actual best bike in the field right now.
Yet Aprilia has had one big issue that has so far prevented that from happening to the extent it should have: its old tale of inconsistent machinery replaced by inconsistent riders who seem determined to do everything in their power to sabotage golden opportunities for success.
That, of course, was most strikingly on display at last weekend's Indonesian Grand Prix, where Marco Bezzecchi should have cruised to a Sunday victory to back up a dominant sprint race win - but instead threw it all away making a completely unnecessary overtake attempt on Marc Marquez that left both of them wounded in the gravel trap.
It was wholly uncalled for, given that Bezzecchi clearly had the speed to charge past Marquez with a little time, as he had demonstrated the day before when a bad start took him from pole position to eighth and he still came back to win even in the short sprint - the sort of performance often considered impossible in modern MotoGP.
It came, too, only eight days after his team-mate Jorge Martin did something similarly dumb at Motegi, crashing both himself and Bezzecchi out of the sprint on the opening lap and leaving himself nursing broken bones for the fourth time this year.
Both of those crashes, it could be argued, stemmed from the same root cause: impatience.
The RS-GP is clearly very good right now, and Aprilia's star riders want results on it while the bike very much feels capable of it. But, after a slow start to the year for Bezzecchi and his annus horribilis for Martin, neither has yet shown their true potential. And, with only a limited number of races now remaining, it seems that both are feeling the opportunities slip away from them.
That's something that was reflected in the tone of Aprilia Racing boss Massimo Rivola when he spoke to the media on Sunday night following a race where, with Martin and Trackhouse racer Ai Ogura out injured and Bezzecchi finishing his day in a local hospital, Raul Fernandez was left as Aprilia's sole scorer in sixth but could have been on the podium but for a clash with Luca Marini.
"We were showing a great speed of all the Aprilias," Rivola admitted, "and I think Marco was clearly the fastest rider of this race weekend so clearly the expectation was very high. But s**t happens."
S**t does happen in racing. But Aprilia deserves for it to have happened far less often in 2025, and for its riders to stop triggering it.
