After much dragging of the chain at the bottom of the MotoGP field, the house of Noale has finally managed to get the RS-GP back on track and is now a protagonist for the 2022 season. With Aleix Espargaró, the Italian team had an outstanding first half of the year and is still very much in the fight for the title with Fabio Quartararo
Aprilia is a reality in the 2022 MotoGP season. After many years clinging to the bottom of the table in the premier class of the MotoGP World Championship, the house of Noale has finally taken a big step forward and is now a star of the championship. The RS-GP is a protagonist bike, which was competitive in various scenarios and allowed Aleix Espargaró to form a solid threat to the bi-championship.
It is true that Aprilia was late to arrive. And that becomes much more glaring when KTM becomes the standard of comparison. After all, the Mattighofen-based brand took much less time to achieve its first MotoGP victory, even with less experience on asphalt - the Austrians' great strength has always been off-road.
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The Italians, however, have had a much longer road to travel. Since returning to the World Championship in 2015 after a ten-year absence, Aprilia has had a journey marked by ill-timed decisions and even mistakes. Two things stand out: the many changes of riders and the overlapping of Romano Albesiano's role, who combined technical command with team management.
Things only started to go better in Noale when Massimo Rivola arrived. With 21 seasons of experience in Formula 1, the Italian was hired at the end of 2018 and, after getting the hang of MotoGP, began to reorganize things. Little by little, Aprilia got back on track.
The first podium of this new phase came just last year at the British GP, when Aleix Espargaró took third place after beating Jack Miller at Silverstone. The return to the top-3 was even more spectacular: after a dominant weekend, the Catalan won the Argentinean GP, giving Aprilia its first win in MotoGP.
Known as 'captain' of the team, Aleix Espargaró is the soul of this project. He is the guy who believed in the potential of the RS-GP and pursued the improvement of the prototype. Pol's brother was an underrated supporting player in MotoGP, but he worked hard and put all his chips on an Aprilia that rarely showed it could really come out the other side.
Today, Aleix reaps the rewards of this work. And nothing more fair than him being the guy to be there, carrying the Noale flag at the top of the standings in the RS-GP's best moment in MotoGP.
From what it showed in the first part of the year, Aprilia has a competitive and solid bike, able to adapt to various types of tracks, an asset in MotoGP today. Since it can still upgrade the engine because of the concessions - which it lost for next year - it still has a chance to improve in areas that the others cannot, which is an extra card to play in 2022.
With only 21 points less than Quartararo in the World Drivers' Championship standings, Aleix is very much alive in the race and is fully capable of achieving his dream of the title. Against someone who has had a season as cerebral as Fabio, it's safe to say that it won't be easy, but whatever the outcome of 2022, Aprilia comes out bigger in MotoGP. So does Espargaró.
MotoGP is now on vacation and will only be back in action on August 7, with the British GP at Silverstone.GRANDE PRÊMIO is following all the activities of the 2022 MotoGP World Championship.