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

Disastrous Aprilia weekend, humiliating Aragon MotoGP race

Aleix Espargaro trails Marc Marquez by a staggering 40 seconds, while Maverick Vinales withdraws halfway through.

On Friday at the Aragon MotoGP practice, Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales ended the day with only Marc Marquez ahead of them on the leaderboard.

Nonetheless, the rain that fell overnight on both Friday and Saturday left them struggling.

At first glance, Espargaro and Vinales trailing Marquez's pole position time by 2.9 seconds and 3.7 seconds respectively seemed like an unusual anomaly.

However, this shortfall was evident in the Sprint race, with Vinales ending up in 19th place, trailing Marquez by 37.6 seconds, which translates to an average of 3.4 seconds per lap.

Espargaro failed to make it past the first turn after experiencing wheelspin on the less clean side of the starting grid and then making contact with the rear of Fabio di Giannantonio's bike.

In his final Aragon race before retiring, Espargaro managed to finish but was a disappointing 40.6 seconds behind Marquez, placing him in tenth position.

“I gave it my all, but nothing seemed to work, and we ended up over 40 seconds behind the winner, which is quite humiliating,” Espargaro commented. “Once again, I struggled to stay on the bike, but at least we managed a top ten finish and earned some points.”

Espargaro admitted, “We couldn't get the tires to function properly. My main concern was preventing a crash rather than focusing on speed. I even had trouble getting my knee to touch the ground.”

"I wasn't able to tilt the bike during turns. It was an unusual and unfamiliar experience for us that's difficult to come to terms with. We need to understand what went wrong."

Maverick Viñales had an especially tough race on Sunday, falling to the last position right from the start. He stayed there, only ahead of Luca Marini who began from the pit lane, until he had to retire just before reaching the halfway point of the race.

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

"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 commented.

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

The challenge of getting the tyres to perform on a difficult track – with Marquez's race-winning time being 12 seconds slower than Enea Bastianini's from two years prior – appeared to mirror past problems Aprilia has faced when using slick tyres on wet surfaces. "A terrible weekend," said team principal Massimo Rivola. "On Friday, we were quick despite having little grip, but then we lost our momentum, finishing around four seconds off our best times."

"We should use this poor performance as a driving force to keep analyzing and developing ahead of the next races, beginning with Misano."

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

"Today was extremely challenging," Fernandez remarked. "I'm not entirely sure what went wrong. Yesterday, I managed three laps with fairly decent traction, although I experienced significant tyre graining afterwards. However, today, I had no grip at all."

"I had no traction at all; it felt like I was racing on ice the entire time, leading to numerous errors."

"It was one of the toughest races I've ever experienced… The silver lining is that all of us riders on the Aprilia team are encountering the same challenges. With four of us providing feedback, we can collaborate to find a solution."

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

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