Aprilia is working on a carbon fiber chassis, but after stating that it is a very specific material, Marco de Luca explained that the work had already been underway for ‘at least’ 12 months, even though the solution was first seen on track about exactly a year ago.
The Head of the Vehicle Department at Aprilia Racing thus implies that this work has now been ongoing for about 2 years at least – one year until it was tested on track in 2023, and now at the time of the conversation with Crash.net – and he explained the timings, just as Aprilia had done before with other components: ‘This is something you start at least 12 months before. If not more. Especially if it’s something you are doing for the first time, like when we migrated from the aluminium swingarm to the carbon fibre’.
The work, he assured, is still being developed: ‘For Aprilia, it was a second attempt. The first they tested, they tried and they didn’t arrive at the end. Then we started again the project and after one year we arrived at the track with something that even now we are still evolving’.
At this stage, other situations regarding the project are still being adjusted and studied, as he clarified: ‘We are always evolving the structure, the concept, the design – even for something that you might think is now quite normal. There is still a continuous project of development for the weight, the stiffness, durability, material. It’s very complex technology’.
What is certain is that MotoGP will undergo a drastic change for 2027, and it is expected that until then, teams will not have significant changes to their bikes, so such a project, based on speculation, may be presented as ‘final’ in a couple of years or more.