After a difficult season in 2016 at Suzuki where he found himself compared to a teammate of the level of Maverick Vinales, Aleix Espargaro is now leader at Aprilia, which allows him to develop a motorcycle to his liking on his own.
To situate Aprilia's level in MotoGP last year, remember that Alvaro Bautista finished twelfth and Stefan Bradl sixteenth in the World Championship. The best results were three seventh places achieved by Bradl in Argentina and by Bautista in Japan and Malaysia.
When he discovered the Italian in Valencia, Espargaro ranked ninth, 0.9 behind Vinales. He was a little further behind in the standings during the Sepang tests in thirteenth position, but closer in terms of time at 0.7 behind Vinales. The first day at Phillip Island saw Aleix place fourteenth at 1.3, then on the second he was brilliantly in sixth position at 0.6. Finally, he finished tenth at 0.8 without the help of the new engine which experienced some problems and which will be analyzed in Italy. Sam Lowes finished twenty-first at 1.6, but with the Aprilia 2016 model so that he could familiarize himself with the category.
According to Aleix, “ We leave these tests with a satisfactory overall level. We really worked hard. Today we focused on consistency of performance. The RS-GP performed very well in the race simulations, but we know there is still room for improvement in this area. Here at Phillip Island I found a bike that once again suits my riding style when braking, while we were able to improve in terms of grip compared to the Sepang test.
“After talking about it with the others, I think we should be able to win in the corners, especially the fast corners. Speaking of which, we tried some changes to the chassis architecture to see if we could find more speed through the center of corners. In Qatar we will continue in this direction, further testing the new fairing and upgraded engine in order to establish the basis for the first race weekend. »
