MotoGP | Savadori: “Aprilia in Austria with a laboratory motorcycle”

The Assen crash is now behind him and Lorenzo Savadori will be back in his suit and helmet at the Red Bull Ring. The Aprilia tester will compete in the Austrian Grand Prix this weekend, even if he is not fully recovered from the big crash he had a month and a half ago in Holland. Getting back in the saddle is always a positive thing though and the Italian will be in Spielberg for the second time in a short time, having recently carried out tests in Austria.

“I’m not 100% yet, we did a few laps during the tests two weeks ago, but I haven’t been able to ride much,” Savadori explained on Thursday of the Austrian Grand Prix, the first time he’ll be back in action since his injury in Assen. “I’m a little better, I’m still recovering because the blow was quite big. I broke four lumbar transverse processes, my ankle is also not right, although it’s not broken. I had to stay out for about thirty days. You recover 100%, but it takes a bit of time.”

But, not having yet recovered 100%, wasn’t it risky to return to the track? Savadori explained that he discussed it with the Noale manufacturer and decided to go out on the track even though he hadn’t recovered full fitness: “We talked to Aprilia, but I also wanted to get back on the bike and race. Then for us it’s important to be here because I’ll have a very experimental bike. It has to go out on the track, we need to ride and, since this isn’t a friendly track, it’s important to see how the new bike will go. This year we managed to take a step forward in the braking phase; so, from that point of view it will go better. Then we’ll see when the others go out on the track, because they too will have taken steps forward”.

Experimental bike: this is the focus of the technicians and engineers in the current MotoGP. Aprilia has always been a pioneer in technological innovations, and this Grand Prix is ​​no different, indeed. Savadori revealed that the RS-GP that we will see this weekend in his garage will be a laboratory bike, even if he could not commit himself on the innovations: “I can’t say anything! You will have to be good, they told me not to say anything. This bike is very much a laboratory, more than in Assen. There is a completely different job that we have to do here. We have a lot of new things in view of 2025. Are they very different things? You can notice them, but it is difficult to see them”.

“My job is completely different to Espargaro and Vinales,” he explained when asked if the two regular riders will have the same changes. “We in the test team have to work even at the expense of performance. The weekends, especially since the introduction of the Sprints, have become extremely fast and you only look for performance because you can work relatively little, because you have a good shift which is the one on Friday afternoon. However, I don’t do this type of work as a test team, we have a different type of program. I don’t know if the regular riders will change their working method.”

Aprilia is constantly innovating, but its rivals are also making steps forward and this is reflected in the results. However, the tester from the Noale manufacturer underlined how, compared to 2023, the bike has taken a significant step forward: “If we look at this year’s bike compared to last year, it has improved in general everywhere. If we also look at Sprint and qualifying, we are always up there. Sometimes, we have more problems during long races. It’s a situation we are trying to resolve, but even on less favorable tracks for us, we are always up there”.