Aprilia MotoGP boss Massivo Rivola has told The Race that Sunday’s incredible maiden victory for Aleix Espargaro at the Argentine Grand Prix has come “too early” in the Italian factory’s 2022 season, upsetting its carefully-laid plans for the year and adding expectation to the season after the Spaniard dominated the third round of the championship at the Termas de Rio Hondo track.
The team always expected to be in contention for race wins in 2022 thanks to both consistent improvements over the past few seasons with their RS-GP bike and due to an incredibly strong preseason testing programme with both Espargaro and team-mate Maverick Vinales.
The duo controlled the pace throughout most of MotoGP’s five days of pre-season action, and speaking to The Race at the time Rivola highlighted a number of key races, mainly coming in the latter part of the year, where he thought that his two riders could be frontrunners – but the Argentine track, only a few races into the year, wasn’t one of them.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Phillip Island, also Assen, maybe even the Sachsenring could be interesting,” Rivola said at the Sepang test. “Qatar is another one, and of course Silverstone. We can be very fast, but let’s see.
“Considering the characteristics we see now compared to the competitors, at these kind of tracks, we can be fast. It looks interesting!”
But the benefit of that testing success by Espargaro wasn’t just in raising the bar for the Noale factory before the year even kicked off – it was also to build an ultra-competitive base set-up for him that means that his RS-GP is very quick to dial in. And, with the weekend’s action at Termas shortened to only two days due to logistical problems, Rivola says that it means everything came together ahead of schedule.
“I don’t want to say that it was a super help,” the former Ferrari F1 sporting director explained, “but the race weekend format maybe gave us a bit of help, because Aleix has the bike set his way and he doesn’t need to do a lot of set-up changes. He can concentrate on his riding style.
“The victory came a bit too early. If you win the last race of the season then you finish the year and everyone says ‘oh, it was a fantastic season for Aprilia.’ But winning now, now we have to show that we can do it again, and that’s not easy.
“We didn’t expect to win so early in the season, because now we have a problem. We’ve raised the level and the expectation is higher. Managing the expectation is always the biggest drama.”
But if there’s one thing that Rivola has excelled at since joining the team in 2019, a moment that Espargaro heralded after the race as the entire project’s turning point, it’s establishing himself as someone more than capable of managing people.
Having joined after years of instability at Aprilia and immediately getting stuck into the job of building the group of engineers into a happy team, in Argentina he was very quick to downplay his race-winning rider’s comments and instead pay tribute to those around him.
“To be honest,” he admitted, “I think I was lucky that I managed to convince people to come to work on the project, and it worked. It’s the usual combo: work and belief, work and belief, work and belief.
“There’s no magic. The magic comes from the group and the atmosphere, it comes when you start perceiving the feeling that good things are coming and that makes you push more. I don’t want to put limits to this feeling.”
That ‘magic’ clearly exists, though – and not just on one side of the Aprilia garage, after a weekend for Maverick Vinales that on paper wasn’t as successful as Espargaro’s but in reality was just as important as he too continues to build up his experience with the RS-GP.
Still struggling somewhat for confidence and feeling as he continues to adapt himself from a Yamaha rider into an Aprilia one – a transition that we’ve seen before can take years – he enjoyed his best-ever weekend for the squad by qualifying fifth and finishing seventh, something that Rivola says bodes very well for the latter half of the year and their original plan of action.
“It was really good and I’m super happy for Aleix,” he said, “who was the fastest in qualifying, the fastest in the race, the fastest for one lap. I think he will remember this 200th race. He really deserves it, and I don’t think there is anyone faster with him on an Aprilia.
“But to have such a talent like Maverick, Aleix is the perfect reference for him. I think that Maverick will come, he can really push Aleix even more. Maybe not now, but in the middle of the season he can be like that – and that is our target for sure.”
And with that boost in form comes an even clearer picture of what the future holds for the team. While Vinales has been widely expected to remain beyond the end of 2022, when both riders’ contracts expire, Espargaro’s next move has been less certain as the 32-year-old approaches the traditional MotoGP retirement age.
Yet with things finally clicking into place only now for the first time in his 200-race-long premier-class career and with him already hinting that we’re going to be seeing more of him in 2023, it’s obvious that there’ll be a place for him at Aprilia for as long as he wants it.
“From my point of view, everything was clear from the beginning,” stressed Rivola. “For me our riders are Aleix and Maverick for the next 10 years, because Aleix says that he’s old but he’s in the best shape ever, and if he can keep this momentum, training with the kind of lifestyle that he has, then he can really stay many years.
“He has such a good feeling with the Aprilia now that it’s difficult to lose it. You keep that. It’s part of your instincts.”
