Aprilia Racing Team Gresini resumed work developing the bike at Sepang Test 2, bringing new solutions and data to the track which had been developed by the racing department at Noale over the last few weeks.
Alvaro Bautista and Marco Melandri focused primarily on testing the intermediate versions of the bikes.
The tests were decidedly encouraging for Bautista who, besides benefiting from the great job done by the Aprilia Racing mechanics.
Marco Melandri worked hard, but still getting use to the new Aprilia MotoGP bike after years of SBK, and the many solutions tested, obviously without focusing on individual lap performance.
ALVARO BAUTISTA #19
“We are continuing to grow little by little and I think we can be satisfied with our progress. The positive thing is that we have already improved our times since Sepang1. So we are working well and we need to keep it up. For the first day today we focused on the electronics, trying to solve a few issues that had come up during the previous tests. We also tested a frame with a different stiffness to specifically try and improve performance.
ROMANO ALBESIANO, APRILIA RACING MANAGER
“Testing a different frame today I had some promising feelings. We are obviously still far from our goals, that gives us something we can work with. For Aprilia the target is to be competitive in mid of the season. This test session without placing too much importance on lap times is to collect more data. We need time and we need to keep testing to choose which direction to go. Today we are laying the foundation. Now we just have to keep working patiently.”
