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

Disastrous Weekend for Aprilia at Aragon MotoGP

Aleix Espargaro ends the race 40 seconds adrift of Marc Marquez, while Maverick Vinales fails to complete the event, withdrawing halfway through.

Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales concluded Friday's MotoGP practice session at Aragon with only Marc Marquez ahead of them on the leaderboard.

Despite rainfall on both Friday and Saturday nights, which led to muddy conditions, they struggled significantly.

Initially, a gap of 2.9 seconds for Espargaro and 3.7 seconds for Vinales behind Marquez's pole position time in qualifying seemed like an unusual event.

However, this gap was evident in the Sprint race, where Vinales ended up in 19th place, finishing last, trailing Marquez by 37.6 seconds, which averages to 3.4 seconds per lap.

Espargaro, on the other hand, failed to make it past the first turn due to wheelspin on the less clean side of the starting grid, which led to him making contact with the rear of Fabio di Giannantonio.

In his final Aragon race before retiring, Espargaro managed to finish but ended up in tenth place, trailing Marquez by an "embarrassing" 40.6 seconds.

"I gave it my all, but nothing seemed to be effective, and we ended up more than 40 seconds behind the winner, which is quite humiliating," Espargaro stated. "Once more, I nearly fell off the bike, but we managed to secure a top ten finish and earn some points."

Espargaro acknowledged that they couldn't get the tires to function properly. He mentioned that his priority was more on preventing crashes rather than on optimizing performance. He added that it was challenging to even get his knee to touch the ground.

"I wasn't able to lean the bike into the turns. This was an unusual and unfamiliar circumstance for us, and it's difficult to come to terms with. We need to understand what went wrong."

Vinales faced an even tougher situation, falling to the very end of the pack right at the start of Sunday's race. He stayed in that position, only ahead of Luca Marini who began from the pit lane, until he withdrew from the race shortly before reaching the halfway point.

The fastest lap of the COTA winner was 2.7 seconds slower than Marquez's best lap.

Vinales mentioned that they struggled to make the tyres function properly. He felt as though he might crash at each corner, particularly due to the rear tyre.

"The weekend presented numerous challenges for both Aprilia and myself. Despite a strong showing on Friday, everything seemed to fall apart afterward."

The struggle to get the tires to perform on a challenging track surface resulted in Marquez's race time being 12 seconds slower than Enea Bastianini's from two years prior. This issue mirrored past troubles Aprilia faced when using slick tires on wet tracks. "It was a terrible weekend," stated team principal Massimo Rivola. "On Friday, we were quick despite having little grip, but we then lost our direction and ended up around four seconds off our best times."

"We should use this poor performance as motivation to keep analyzing and improving ahead of the next races, beginning with Misano."

Trackhouse racer Miguel Oliveira, who finished fifth in the Sprint, fell on the first lap of the grand prix. His teammate, Raul Fernandez, ended up in 16th place due to a penalty for tyre pressure.

"Today was incredibly tough," Fernandez commented. "I'm not quite sure what went wrong. Yesterday, I managed three laps with decent grip before experiencing significant tire graining. However, today, I didn't have any grip at all."

"I had no traction; it felt like I was skating on ice the entire race, which led to numerous errors on my part."

“That race was among the toughest I’ve ever experienced. The silver lining is that all of us in Aprilia are encountering similar problems. With four riders providing feedback, we can collaborate and steer towards a solution together.”

Another piece of positive news for Aprilia is that the upcoming home round at Misano this weekend is expected to provide significantly better traction.

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