2015 MotoGP season all about development - Aprilia

The Italian manufacturer originally intended to rejoin the championship in 2016 to coincide with the upcoming technical rule change, before bringing its programme forward to this year.

Aprilia has had a toe-in-the-water MotoGP involvement in recent years through private teams running the ART chassis in the CRT and Open classes.

This season's full works effort with long-time Honda satellite team Gresini is based on an upgraded version of the Open class bike, as a precursor to an all-new machine for 2016.

Romano Albesiano, head of Aprilia's motorsport programe, said racing in 2015 would accelerate the development process, though he acknowledged it was "risky" to go up against Honda, Yamaha, Ducati and Suzuki in such circumstances.

"We chose to move up our start date, getting into the mix in the 2015 MotoGP world championship, because we believe that this is the solution which is certainly the most risky but also the best one to become competitive as quickly as possible," he said.

"We certainly could have avoided the pressure and waited until next year, but that's not what Aprilia wanted.

"In terms of development we are starting on a solid foundation which is the result of our winning experience in Superbike and the ART project, the only CRT that was able to show potential close to 'real' MotoGP bikes.

"For us this will be a year of testing, development and in some ways even sacrifice, to be taken full advantage of as we look toward 2016 when we will be able to ride a real Aprilia prototype bike onto the track."

Alvaro Bautista has stayed on at Gresini for the Aprilia project, joined by MotoGP returnee Marco Melandri.

The Italian, runner-up to Valentino Rossi in the 2005 MotoGP standings and a six-time top-level grand prix winner, has so far struggled to get up to speed after switching back from World Superbikes, and has openly expressed misgivings about the move.