Aprilia sees itself in Ducati’s “slipstream” after Sepang MotoGP test

Aprilia believes it is heading into the 2026 MotoGP season in Ducati’s “slipstream”, conceding that the Borgo Panigale marque remains the benchmark in the championship.

After enjoying its best season to date in MotoGP history, Aprilia was expected to make a step forward this year and potentially put itself in a position to mount a sustainable title challenge.

But while the Noale factory has genuinely improved the RS-GP in every metric, much of its gains have been negated by Ducati, which has managed to build a faster and more versatile version of the Desmosedici GP.

Aprilia's Massimo Rivola said he can be satisfied with the job the manufacturer did over the winter, but is wary of the progress rivals have made following the opening pre-season test of the year at Sepang.

“I'm happy about the fact that the ‘26 bike is better than the ‘25. Again, it shows that Noale is quite a good company, able to make nice bikes but also improve the performance every year,” he said. “But we can only work on our bikes, on ourselves, and not on others.

“We saw that almost everybody improved. We saw Honda being very fast, Ducati being the reference again and KTM being better than last year.

“Honestly, I think it's going to be quite an interesting championship, again with someone [Ducati] leading. That is still the same, but we will stay in the slipstream.”

Massimo Rivola, Aprilia Racing

Photo by: Rainier Ehrhardt

Ducati led the way in this week’s Sepang test, with Gresini’s Alex Marquez setting a best time of 1m56.402s on the factory-spec GP26. Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi didn’t finish too far off on the timesheets, with a late effort on the soft tyre vaulting him to second behind Marquez.

However, in sprint race simulations, Ducati was clearly the class of the field, with Alex Marquez, Francesco Bagnaia and Marc Marquez all impressing with their average lap times. Bezzecchi was considerably slower than the trio, but his decision to run on worn tyres rendered any comparisons meaningless.

Asked whether he felt Aprilia is closer to Ducati than it was last year, Rivola said: “I can't tell you yet, we need to take a closer look because in testing it's always difficult to know how many laps that tyre had done, how much fuel was in that tank.

“Pecco did a sprint simulation, now we can all go home - see you in ‘27 (laughs). 

“I think that in any case we definitely have a better bike than last year. Last year didn't go badly, so we can't help but be optimistic. The others have clearly improved too. It's still a bit early to say. Ducati will be a benchmark anyway.”

MotoGP will hold another two-day test at Buriram prior to the season-opening Thai Grand Prix on 1 March.

With a much longer gap between the two pre-season tests than last year, manufacturers have the opportunity to analyse the data from Sepang and bring new parts for Buriram before homologating their 2026 aero packages.

Aprilia will also evaluate certain new components at Buriram, but Rivola suggested that the core of the new RS-GP is largely defined.

“There will be small parts also in Thailand,” he revealed. “I think 80-90% of the package will be fixed tonight [after Speang].

“But after we analyse everything at home, small details will be brought to Thailand for the very last development in order to have quite a good base.

“Obviously, Thailand is quite a different track in terms of aero, in terms of characteristics, it's more a stop-and-go track. There will be something more [from Aprilia].”