The team manager of the Aprilia MotoGP team has suggested that the Noale factory could return to the drawing board to design a more “radical” fairing after seeing that of Ducati which we think will ultimately be homologated.
Going back…
When wings were banned at the end of last season, we initially thought that aerodynamic research would stop there.
Then, by translating and analyzing the regulations, we realized that there was still a possibility of working in this area by designing double-skin fairings incorporating fins inside.
In fact, any protuberances protruding from the fairing are prohibited. The spirit of the regulations was therefore to use fairings with fluid and traditional shapes while giving free rein to the inventiveness of engineers to do what they wanted inside said fairing.
This approach, followed to the letter by Yamaha, was initially confirmed by Danny Aldridge with the following words : “To use the Yamaha example, for me it is allowed because, although the rules say 'no bulges', the reason I don't consider it a 'bulge' is because it presents a continuous curve , with a similar radius from top to bottom. There is no real variation in the angle of the curve. From a security point of view, it is perfect. There is no problem at all. What we don't want is things coming out of the fairing at 90 degree angles or with sudden changes in radius. What you can see from Yamaha is what we expected to see. »
Then appeared in Australia the Suzuki fairings, already less homogeneous, and Aprilia, more original.
Honda presented two different fairings, one resembling the Suzuki but more distinct, the other more traditional with a enlarged and advanced air inlet.
Then, Ducati presented its spectacular fairing, visibly very studied in the wind tunnel, and resembling an F1 front.
The astonishment of the members of the paddock increased further when the authorities, Mike Webb then Danny Aldridge, suggested through their declaration that this element should finally be able to obtain approval!
Goodbye to gentle curves, goodbye to prohibitions on changing angles; all this was forgotten while trying to persuade us that if we blocked all the holes in this aerodynamic element, it would look like a traditional fairing...
Roman Albesian is therefore one of the surprised and, taking into account this apparent change of attitude of the authorities, plans to present something more spectacular than the RS-GP fairing which appeared in Australia.
He explained it on the microphone of our friends from crash.net : » we made an interpretation of the regulations which was the most respectful of its spirit, the strictest in relation to the rules. The idea was to have a “standard” fairing and then, inside, we did something to recover more downforce, or to have support. Yamaha and Honda partially did this, because they added something on the side.
Ducati has built something really far from what was our interpretation of the regulations. It is very difficult to define something that is compliant. The regulations say that the only judge is the technical director of the championship. The important point is to understand its interpretation. If we take into account that things like Ducati's are acceptable, OK, now we know we can go to that point, or maybe even further.
But we tried to do something very, very similar to a traditional fairing, and get some downforce from it inside. But if you compare our fairing and Ducati's, you can see that the latter is a much more radical interpretation of the regulations than ours. “
However, Romano Albesiano then revealed that the fairing tested by Aleix Espargaro at Phillip Island will probably be the one approved for the start of the season: » we will probably keep him as an option for the start of the season. So we'll have the classic and this one. Then we will see, depending on the characteristics of the different routes. »
Aprilia will then still be entitled to a new fairing for this 2017 season, possibly even more radical...
