Aprilia stunned the world press corp with the quality and performance of its first big bore four-stroke sportbike, the RSV Mille. After digging into the facts, however, the press corp came away nodding and understanding. Aprilia has a core of talented and dedicated engineers — driven by a passion for motorcycling and, more importantly, a passion for winning.
Aprilia attacks racing with one goal in mind: winning. Aprilia has taken on the “big boys” from Japan in grand prix racing for several years, and has quite a track record to show for it. Aprilia World Champions include, most notably, Max Biaggi and Valentino Rossi. They rode 250cc two-stroke GP bikes, but no one doubts that the same passion and commitment has transferred to Aprilia’s WSB effort.
After a year of development, which saw the Aprilia surprisingly competitive, Aprilia has stepped up with a former World champion, Troy Corser, as its pilot for the RSV Mille Superbike. Corser, who is tremendously talented but, for whatever reason, could not run with Carl Fogarty on the Ducati last year, was terminated by Ducati to make room for American Ben Bostrom.
These beautiful pictures of Corser turning practice laps, courtesy of Aprilia, reminded us of Aprilia’s unique passion for racing, and its tremendous success against the giants of Japan. We’ll be watching Corser carefully this year, along with the other WSB riders. Even though most of the press is focusing on the new Hondas, as well as Fogarty and Bostrom at Ducati, and even though Corser hasn’t been particularly quick in practice on his new mount, we wouldn’t be surprised to see something special happen with Aprilia’s entry in WSB this year.
