Aprilia going 'in a bit of a circle' with 2016 MotoGP bike

Delays with its all-new RS-GP meant Aprilia's 2016 bike - which replaced last year's production-derived machine - did not join the rest of the field until the final pre-season test in Qatar in March.

Bradl is 13th in the championship, one spot ahead of team-mate Alvaro Bautista after six races, with his seventh in the chaotic Argentina race the squad's best race result.

Bautista has recorded Aprilia's best qualifying result, 13th at Jerez.

The Italian manufacturer continues to bring new parts to each grand prix, including a new engine for the Italian Grand Prix - that Bradl could feel the difference from and Bautista could not.

Bradl says progress has not always been linear, circuit to circuit, as developments arrive, having felt the RS-GP was nervous at Mugello.

"We changed quite a lot from Jerez to Le Mans and then we changed quite a lot now from Le Mans to Mugello, because the problems we have are different," Bradl said.

"Actually [Mugello was] a bit similar to Le Mans, but in a different way. The reason for the problem is another one.

"We are turning a little bit in a circle now, but we are keeping positive and thinking positive."

A handful of months into the bike's life, Bradl acknowledges that Aprilia is still in the understanding phase.

"We come to a racetrack like [Mugello] and we expect to be much more competitive, we see that our package seems just simply not good enough," he said.

"We are learning from racetrack to racetrack, especially with this bike it's like four months old now and it's still a very young project.

"We had a couple of good results and a couple of good race weekends, like in Austin, we made some good steps where actually we thought that we would suffer but we made one of our best race weekends.

"Unfortunately tracks like Le Mans or Jerez, where we thought that we would be more competitive, it was the opposite."

BRADL NOT THINKING ABOUT SECOND 2017 SEAT

Moto2 championship leader Sam Lowes will graduate to MotoGP next year with Aprilia.

While the second seat alongside the British rider is still available, Bradl said he is not letting that uncertainty affect his intra-team battle with Bautista.

"I think when I arrived in this team there was already a good rivalry with Alvaro," he said.

"I have known him for a very long now and we had the same [rivalry] more or less when he was in Gresini and I was in LCR with the Honda satellite teams, so it didn't change a lot.

"To be honest, I don't think so much about it. Time will tell us what will happen, I try to focus on myself and try to make the best possible race weekend as I can."