Espargaro, Vinales give first impressions of 2023 Aprilia

By the time a light rain shower arrived at 2pm, the pair were fourth (Vinales) and fifth (Espargaro) on the timesheets, behind only the Ducatis of Jorge Martin, Francesco Bagnaia and Enea Bastianini.

With sunshine returning, the RS-GP riders will be back out to continue their work for the final hours of Friday.

"We concentrated a lot on [comparing] the old bike and new bike, and I feel [the new bike is] better than last year’s bike,” said Vinales.

“So we used it straight away. Trying to do laps, understanding. Everything is more positive [with the new bike]. There isn’t anything negative which is a good sign for the first day.

“Braking is similar, but I like how the bike corners,” Vinales added. “I feel better. I feel the bike is more light for changing direction. And then top speed I don't know because we didn't check. It’s very hard to understand if 2-3 ks while you are riding!

“But overall, I feel I can ride much more naturally, which is really good. That's why I'm happy because straight away the feeling was very good.”

Vinales also has more aero updates to try.

“Still we have a lot of things for the aerodynamics, but we wanted to understand if the [new] bike was better or not. Now we understand, we want to work during the afternoon…”

Aleix: New bike looks good, we’ll see if it’s good enough

Espargaro echoed his team-mate’s positive first impression but with the caveat that bigger changes might be needed.

“This winter I changed a bit my training, I didn't train with a superbike, and I felt good to be back on the bike immediately,” Espargaro began.

“In the last part of the morning, I tried the '23 bike. It looks good. They changed a lot of small things around the bike. We still have a lot of time in front of us, we'll see if it's competitive enough, but it looks quite good.

“A lot of small things,” are better, Espargaro confirmed: “For example, the last time we were here in Malaysia, the bike was super hot everywhere. It burned all my body, so they changed a lot the cooling of the bike.

“We still have to try a lot of new items in aerodynamics. Some we are going to try here, some others we are going to try in Portimão. The power is slightly better. The stability, the turning looks a little bit better.

“I was expecting maybe a little bit bigger changes, but we still have two days, so many things to try.”

When asked about engine specifications, as Aprilia prepares for its first full season without technical concessions, the factory's MotoGP race winner replied:

“It's a bit complicated. But let's say that I have one full 2023 bike. It's not the final one, they told me that the racing engines are going to upgrade a little bit more, because I was expecting a little bit more power. But it's still early.

“The 2022 bike I did three laps and it was enough [to know the 2023 is better]. But sincerely, [the 2023] is not a revolution, it's basically very similar.

“So we focused on the 2023. We have one hybrid, and we have one full '23, so we can work with these two bikes, and I put the 2022 to one side. But the difference is not huge.”

Sprint race fuel tank

With half-length Sprint races introduced on Saturday afternoon’s this season, Espargaro confirmed that Aprilia will have a revised fuel tank available to keep the fuel in the optimum position, just as for qualifying.

“We already had a time attack fuel tank with just 5kg, which we used in qualifying,” Espargaro said. “We have also the option on our race fuel tank to just use half of the fuel tank.

“The Sprint race fuel tank we are going to put the fuel on one side [part]. It's more for the mechanics, for the engineers to work differently. But for me, I don't think it will change much.”