Like Fabio Quartararo at Yamaha and Marc Marquez with Honda, Aleix Espargaró expected much more from his employer, namely, Aprilia, in this first test of the 2023 off-season. The times, however, were encouraging. were all the less interested as he was beaten not only by his teammate Maverick Viñales but also by Miguel Oliveira who was discovering RS-GP and his RNF team, which was just inaugurating its status as a satellite team of the racing firm. Noale. But by then he had already left the Ricardo Tormo layout because he had nothing to evaluate apart from a swinging arm. At the end of a season with a frustrating end where he lost the final podium in the last Grand Prix of the 2022 season, Aleix Espargaró regrets a missed opportunity to move forward, specifying that he still does not know why Aprilia collapsed after the Aragon Grand Prix…
The only satisfaction ofAleix Espargaró at the end of this Valencia test was that its term gave the signal for the winter break. The dean of the MotoGP field, 33 years old, will be able to recharge his batteries after a campaign where he glimpsed the title before missing the podium. Between the two, one Aprilia who lost his means at the start of the overseas campaign in the last part of the battle. But the most worrying thing is that Valencia Grand Prix, she did not seem to have recovered all her means. A mystery which remains unsolved and which its pilot does not fail to underline: “ we would first need to understand what happened to the 2022 bike in the second half » begins Pol's brother, now at KTM under the GASGAS banner. “ Maverick and I have scored 18 points each in the last five races, and that's very poor. We must understand the drop in performance in the second half of the year he comments.
And it is with this question thatAprilia is still preparing for 2023. Or almost... Because while the competition sent onto the Ricardo Tormo track machines with black fairings symptomatic of a draft for the next season, Aprilia was the only factory without major developments in this first pre-season test. A situation which angered the teammate of Maverick Vinales, who signed the second performance of the test, with a new chief mechanic who is an old Suzuki acquaintance, Manu Cazeaux: “ I haven't tried anything, the bike just had a slightly different swing arm, the rest is nothing I haven't tried before » regrets No. 41.
Aleix Espargaró: “ I can't be happy«
And for Aleix Espargaró, having to wait until February and Malaysia to test the 2023 bike is not good news: “ this is in no way positive, because now the engineers obviously have work to prepare the 2023 prototype for Malaysia, but they have no indication in terms of data. It's true that between Malaysia and Portugal there will be a lot of time, almost a month to work, but we have lost a good window without storing information. It's like that ».
He adds : " I can't be happy. We have not made any leap forward, our rivals had a lot of new products, from Ducati, KTM, Honda, Yamaha...we tried a swingarm and it gives us a little more traction when you lift the bike, and that's been positive, but the rest of what we need will have to wait ". There was also something else that the other teams also evaluated, taking into account the fact that in 2023, there will be two starts to be made in one meeting… “ This year we had some doubts with the new clutch that we released mid-year, in carbon. We weren't competitive in the starts, and the test team worked on that with Savadori, they brought a new version of the clutch and I wanted to push it a little. Next year there will be 44 races and 44 starts, I think that's very important ».
But there is also this which does not come: “ we need more power, to accelerate more, and at maximum speed today we lose 10 km/h with the Ducati, that's a lot ". Then he finishes: “ we were quick, I can't tell you why either, I don't know if it's a positive or negative thing. The bike had a lot of grip. We did a lot of laps in less than 1'30, I didn't run on soft tires, I only used two medium tires, and yet all the laps were very fast. I don't know, it's hard to understand. It's a shame we didn't achieve that in the Grand Prix, I think it would have been a good race looking at the result of this test ».
We feel a hint of bitterness. And also doubts. But he is now counting on the work of the test team to support him: “ I think we're going to take a leap forward with the satellite team, and Raul Fernandez and Miguel Oliveira liked the bike very much, I hope that next year Aprilia can improve in general ". The Portuguese beat him in the ranking of this test by closing the top 4. Raul fernandez, for his part, was satisfied with the 21st performance.
Valencia test: times
Credit classification motogp.com
