Maverick Vinales disclosed an odd problem he encountered with Aprilia, pointing out the RS-GP’s tendency to struggle in the second half of each MotoGP season. He stated that the crew “changed everything” on the bike but was unable to determine the core cause of the problem. Despite this, the Spaniard won his first and only Grand Prix with the team at the 2024 Americas GP, following a solid performance in Qatar’s season opener.
Vinales, who joined Aprilia in 2021 after leaving Yamaha and will join KTM’s Tech3 squad in 2025, said that neither he nor the team really understood why the bike did so well in the first half of the season. He admitted that while he felt at his best on the RS-GP at times, its performance steadily deteriorated as the season continued.
The Aprilia delivered great success in the first ten races of the 2024 season, winning three sprint races and one grand prix. The squad only finished on the podium in two sprint races over the next ten. Vinales has an explanation for the anomaly: Aprilia began each season with the RS-GP already performing at peak performance. In contrast, competing teams improved their bikes gradually during the year, surpassing Aprilia’s pace by the second half, giving the impression that the bike had lost performance. Vinales described the unexpected occurrence as follows:
“I had a few races when I felt amazing.
“Le Mans ’23, I just wrecked. But I believe that race might be another triumph. There were also other instances where the sensation was really positive.
“The bike showed great potential in some portions of the championship, but something I felt was consistent in my years with Aprilia: the second half of the season was extremely difficult for all Aprilias.
“It’s difficult to grasp because the tracks are usually wonderful for us. But the second half of the championship was always challenging.”
Vinales went on to say that the crew had tried swapping out all of the major elements to find answers before presenting his idea about what happened. He said:
“I don’t know; we tried everything.”
“We replaced swingarms, chassis, everything to figure out what was going on.
“But maybe the idea that I have is that we started at the maximum and the others were a little bit struggling with the new bike and then they made the next step.”
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