After the Austin race that brought the first point, the Aprilia RS-GP bikes await the Rio Hondo track to confirm their progress
Termas de Rio Hondo (Argentina), 14 April 2015 – The Austin race, the second of the MotoGP championship, brought Aprilia Racing Team Gresini their first point in the overall standings thanks to Alvaro Bautista’s placement. This is an important result that demonstrates the progress made by the fledgling RS-GP project.
In the Texan round Bautista had good sensations and was able to push hard and compete with a group of decidedly more mature bikes which have been protagonists for years in the category, ridden by top level riders.
Now, without any break, the championship moves to Argentina for the Sunday race on the Termas de Rio Hondo track. With the same materials used in Austin, Aprilia Racing Team Gresini will be looking for confirmations and new steps forward.
ROMANO ALBESIANO (Aprilia Racing Manager)
“In the Argentina race we should be able to confirm the progress we made at Austin and improve further if possible. We’ll be able to do that thanks to the information Alvaro gathered during his great race on Sunday. We are coming off of a great weekend, thanks to which we gained quite a bit of knowledge and now we have a technical base that we feel is significant and from which we want to evolve. Our immediate goal is to improve grip and pursue a few electronic torque management developments that provided good results in Texas. Obviously, since we are in our rookie season, we are unfamiliar with this track. On paper it isn’t as much of a stop-and-go track like the one from the last race and I think our RS-GP may adapt well here.”
FAUSTO GRESINI (Team Manager)
“Bautista’s performance and our first point in the championship represent a nice injection of confidence for the entire team. In Argentina we’ll have a technical package that will be substantially the same as the one used in Texas, but we’ll be able to count on important information Alvaro gathered in the race and I’m sure that this will allow us to work in an even more focused way to take some further steps forward in terms of development. With both Alvaro and Marco we want to keep gathering data and building up precious experience which will then be essential for our work back home once the European phase of the calendar begins.”
ALVARO BAUTISTA
“The Termas de Rio Hondo track is another new challenge for the Aprilia: the goal, as always, is to gather as much information as possible to improve the performance of the bike and my feeling in the saddle. In Texas we took our first point of the championship, but that doesn’t mean that we will ride onto the track in Argentina thinking about the race results. We will simply continue working, trying to get closer and closer to the riders ahead of us. Finishing the race again will be important to build up information and sensations that will be fundamental to set up development during the European season, where we’ll be able to prepare technical changes more frequently.”
MARCO MELANDRI
“In Argentina I’ll find myself once again on a new track. I hope that this weekend the weather conditions will remain stable, unlike what happened in Texas, so that we can set up our work on the bike better. If we can I think we’ll be able to take a step forward and get closer to the riders in front of us.”
