Aprilia took a paltry three points from the Argentina MotoGP sprint after having begun the Termas de Rio Hondo weekend as a strong favourite.
Aleix Espargaro – the grand prix winner at Termas last year – and Maverick Vinales locked out the top two in both Friday practice sessions, but neither breached the top six in the sprint.
Vinales ended up seventh, the position team-mate Espargaro had been running in when he crashed out.
But it wasn’t a case of the Aprilias being slow. Instead, there were two moments – one on each side of the garage – in which the brand’s Saturday hopes suddenly unravelled.
For Espargaro, the big problem came on Saturday morning. Qualifying was held on a drying track and Espargaro never looked fast enough to challenge for pole – or on par with team-mate Vinales – through the pole shootout.
Neither he, nor Vinales were among the four riders taking the (correct) last-second gamble to swap for slicks in Q2, and Espargaro ended up ninth on the grid.
“I was very frustrated when it started to rain in qualifying, because I had a really good chance to fight for pole position today,” Espargaro said.
“But, no excuses, I was not fast enough on the wet, and even not mentally quick enough to decide to go for the slicks.
“So I paid for it in the race.”
Like at Portimao last week, this left Espargaro caught up in battle with riders he felt he had more pace than – but he confessedly he struggled to match their aggression.
And, with any hopes of a podium fast disappearing, Espargaro finally got through on team-mate Vinales with a fairly aggressive penultimate-corner move on the eighth lap of 12, only to then crash out at Turn 9 while chasing after the Ducatis of Pecco Bagnaia and Alex Marquez up ahead.
“I braked a little bit too late. Just a mistake,” Espargaro explained.
“I didn’t want to lose the chance of the podium, I lost a lot of time with Maverick. Him, Bagnaia, Alex Marquez, they didn’t have traction at all – I had a lot more traction, my bike was a lot better. So when I overtook, I tried to push too quick to catch the guys in front of me, because I know how short this format of the race is.
“And I made a mistake, and I crashed. Not much to say.”
Vinales should’ve been better-set for a good sprint. Though he got swallowed up a bit at Turn 1, he managed to run fifth – exactly where he’d started after being the second-best runner on wets in qualifying – at the end of the opening lap.
At some point, however, he appeared to have picked up some damage to his front fairing. The exact moment of this is hard to zero in on, but the right side of his moustache-looking front winglet snapped off as he geared up to brake into Turn 5 the second time by.
That seemed to impact him right away – he barely made the corner, taking Marco Bezzecchi well wide in the process. And he struggled to assert himself on the race from there, although he was ultimately only three tenths of a second behind fourth-placed Franco Morbidelli when he took the finish.
“Much tougher [than expected]. I lost one winglet in the start. Just tried to make the best, take out the maximum points – it’s what I did,” Vinales said.
“I gave the maximum with what I had. I’m happy. Things to improve, of course, but the bike was OK.”
Vinales said it was his first experience riding a MotoGP bike with its wing set-up damaged like this.
“Of course I lost turning, braking, acceleration. But even like this I was there fighting in the front for the podium. Very good, very good honestly.”
On what would have been possible otherwise, he said: “Tomorrow we will discover. But the important point is that we need to start and go to the front. This is the most important thing. We need to start well, be first in the first corner, and then it will be another race.”
