Aprilia’s Aragon Agony: Espargaro and Vinales Struggle in Embarrassing MotoGP Weekend

Disastrous Weekend for Aprilia at Aragon MotoGP

Aleix Espargaro ends the race a humiliating 40 seconds behind Marc Marquez, while Maverick Vinales withdraws halfway through.

Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales concluded Friday's MotoGP practice session at Aragon with times second only to Marc Marquez.

Nonetheless, the overnight rainfall on both Friday and Saturday left them struggling.

At first, it seemed unusual that Espargaro and Vinales were lagging behind Marquez's pole time by a significant 2.9 seconds and 3.7 seconds respectively during qualifying.

However, this gap became evident in the Sprint race, with Vinales ending up in 19th place, the final position, trailing Marquez by 37.6 seconds, which averages to 3.4 seconds per lap.

Espargaro, on the other hand, was unable to make it past the first turn. He experienced wheelspin due to starting on the less clean side of the grid and subsequently made contact with the rear of Fabio di Giannantonio's bike.

In his final Aragon race before retiring, Espargaro managed to finish but trailed Marquez by an "embarrassing" 40.6 seconds, securing tenth place.

Espargaro expressed his frustration, saying, "I gave it my all, but nothing seemed to work, and we ended up more than 40 seconds behind the winner, which is quite humiliating." He added, "Once again, I struggled to keep the bike under control, but at least we secured a top-ten finish and earned some points."

Espargaro admitted that they couldn't get the tires to perform properly. He said his main concern was preventing a crash rather than focusing on speed, and he found it challenging to even touch his knee to the ground.

"I couldn't tilt the bike into the corners. It was an unusual and unfamiliar scenario for us, which is difficult to come to terms with. We have to understand what went wrong."

Vinales faced an even tougher situation, as he fell to the very back of the pack on the first lap of Sunday’s race. He stayed in that position, with the exception of pit lane starter Luca Marini, until he withdrew from the race shortly before reaching the halfway point.

The fastest lap by the COTA winner was 2.7 seconds slower than Marquez's quickest lap.

"We struggled to get the tires to function properly. It felt like I was on the verge of crashing at every corner, particularly with the rear tire," Vinales stated.

"The weekend turned out to be challenging for both Aprilia and myself. Despite a strong showing on Friday, everything suddenly fell apart."

Struggling to get the tires to perform on a challenging track – with Marquez's race time being 12 seconds slower than Enea Bastianini's performance two years prior – seemed to echo past issues Aprilia has faced when using slick tires in wet conditions. "It was a terrible weekend," stated team boss Massimo Rivola. "On Friday, we were quick despite having little grip, but then we lost our momentum, finishing around four seconds slower than our best times."

"We need to let this poor performance drive us to keep analyzing and improving as we prepare for the next races, beginning with Misano."

Trackhouse racer Miguel Oliveira, who secured fifth place in the Sprint, unfortunately crashed during the first lap of the grand prix. His teammate, Raul Fernandez, ended up in 16th place following a penalty for tyre pressure.

"Today was incredibly challenging," Fernandez stated. "I'm not quite sure what went wrong. Yesterday, I managed three laps with decent grip before experiencing significant tyre graining. However, today, I had no grip at all."

"I couldn't get any traction and it felt like I was racing on ice the whole time, which led to numerous errors on my part."

"That race was one of the toughest I've ever experienced… The silver lining is that we all appear to encounter the same problems with Aprilia. There are four of us riders, each providing our own feedback, so we can collaborate to identify a solution."

Another positive development for Aprilia is that the local Misano race this weekend is expected to provide significantly better traction.

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