Trackhouse Aprilia MotoGP rookie Ai Ogura has been disqualified from the Argentina Grand Prix at Termas de Rio Hondo.
Ogura continued his strong start to his first MotoGP season by finishing eighth on the road in the race, just behind KTM's Brad Binder, but will now have that eighth place stricken from the record.
It was discovered during post-race scrutineering that his Aprilia RS-GP was running a "non-homologated software version" of the series' spec Electronic Control Unit supplied by Magneti Marelli.
What happened?
Under MotoGP’s control electronics rules, teams must run both hardware and software provided to them by control supplier Magneti Marelli, and regular checks are conducted to ensure that they’re only using what has already been homologated.
However, the teams were provided with a new (and as yet un-homologated) version of the control firmware during pre-season testing, with a planned introduction date of later in the season.
That software was loaded onto a number of the team’s electronic control units and successfully used, then left aside until such time as it was approved for race use.
Unfortunately, when Ogura crashed during Q1 on Saturday and wrote off his RS-GP machine, Trackhouse was forced to rebuild his bike using spare parts including the ECU previously used to test the new software during testing.
And while loading all the settings needed for Sunday’s main race into the new version of the operating system of the bike should have caused it to issue a warning to the team of a mismatch between versions, that didn’t happen, in turn causing Ogura to race using a map designed for the old version running on the new one.
Aprilia tech chief Fabiano Sterlacchini confirmed to The Race that this meant Ogura drew "zero" performance benefit from the illegal software spec.
"Zero because the map that we sent was the correct version of firmware, where the stability control is deactivated. We also tried to explain that all the coefficients, they are zero in terms of our electronic action. But the version of firmware was wrong.
"From a substantive point of view, nothing changes, because the performance is there without any advantage. From a legal point of view - sometimes the formal part is what's important. So... that's something that we have to accept."
Ogura forfeits the eight points he scored in the race, while his disqualification promotes a third Honda - Luca Marini's - into the top 10.
In what will be scant consolation for Trackhouse, it also brings its other rider Raul Fernandez into the top 15.
Technical non-compliance disqualifications are increasingly rare in modern MotoGP. The last race disqualifications in the series date all the way back to 2019, and that year they came due to a pitlane exit violation (Karel Abraham) and a doping ban (Andrea Iannone).
