Dovizioso: Aprilia MotoGP wildcard “wasn’t in the plan”

Dovizioso rode the Aprilia for the first time in April at Jerez having agreed a deal with the marque to privately try the bike, with the Italian moving to Mugello for two further days of running on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Currently, the tests at Jerez and Mugello are all that have been agreed between Dovizioso and Aprilia, with the former yet to have any discussions about more outings.

“Still, we didn’t speak about that because our plan was to do these two tests,” Dovizioso said, who is taking a sabbatical in 2021 after losing his Ducati ride at the end of last season.

“I was clear from the beginning, and it was the truth. I wanted to do two tests and this is what happened.

“After this, we will speak about that and the future.”

When asked by Autosport if he had a desire to test the bike again and even race it, he added: “About the race, I don’t think it’s important to speak about racing because it wasn’t in the plan for me at the moment.

“I couldn’t still push with this bike, so my feeling is there’s no reason at this moment to think about racing.

“And we will see. Maybe I will have a chance to do some other tests, but we have to speak about that.”

Andrea Dovizioso, Aprilia

Photo by: Aprilia Racing

Dovizioso’s running at Mugello was largely done in the wet, which meant he wasn’t able to offer a great amount of feedback to Aprilia about the RS-GP – though he was able to improve his riding position on the bike compared to Jerez.

“Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of feedback to explain to Aprilia still because we couldn’t ride, especially in Mugello because when you do the first test and you change the bike it’s always a big change and you need time to realise and understand a lot of things, a lot of details,” he said.

“Everything has changed. The first is the [riding] position, and after you can push and you can try to understand all the areas.

“I have some ideas, but normally I’m quite calm to say something because you have to push and be fast to understand all the details because you can have immediately some feeling, but it’s important to understand the feeling when you are pushing.

“And still I couldn’t have that condition.”

Dovizioso also refused to be drawn too much into his 2022 plans, having taken his sabbatical with a view to returning to the MotoGP grid next year.

“I’m living my life in this moment day by day, so I don’t have any stress about that because if there would be a good situation for me I will take it,” he said when asked if Aprilia was his best 2022 race option.

“I don’t know about my future, I think still it’s not the moment to speak about the future.

“I’m quite happy, I have more time to do some other things than what I did for the last 19 years, and that’s good.”