Raul Fernandez: 2024 Aprilia debut ‘like tasting candy’

Raul Fernandez described his debut on the 2024 Aprilia RS-GP as ‘like tasting candy’ during Monday’s Jerez MotoGP test.

The Spaniard, who rides for the satellite Trackhouse team, is the only Aprilia rider still using the 2023 machine.

Aprilia has promised to upgrade him to the newest bike during this season, a pledge made possible by minimal engine modifications to the ’24.

But with only one aero update allowed, Fernandez is happy to wait until the factory introduces its final 2024 fairing so that he can be on the same aero package as team-mate Miguel Oliveira and factory riders Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales.

The fairing update is also due to feature enhanced rider cooling for the flyaway rounds, after the bike baked its riders at place such as Buriram last season.

“Riding the new bike was like tasting candy - I did just two runs with the 2024 machine and it was good, I did a 1m 37 which I am happy with and I think there is more potential,” said Fernandez,

“It’s not easy to adapt to this bike quickly, especially to understand the [new] aerodynamics.

“It was better, but it will take some time and we don’t want to get confused as I’ll still have to wait some rounds before I get the new one, so we are fully focused on our RS-GP 2023.”

Team manager Wilco Zeelenberg revealed that braking was the main area of improvement felt by Fernandez, but underlined that he is unlikely to make the switch until ‘around the middle of the season’.

“Raul was quite surprised about the 2024 RS-GP - he said there’s a lot of potential and it stops better than his current bike, so this is positive and of course, to go faster with this machine, he needs more time on it, but certainly interesting to see,” Zeelenberg said.

“He’s hungry to do better but he will not have that bike until around middle of the season so he has to be patient. Aprilia is still developing and they want four bikes that are exactly the same for the end of the year which, I think, is a great target.”

Fernandez went on to finish twelfth on the test timesheets with his 23 bike just 0.5s from leader Fabio di Giannantonio (VR46 Ducati) with a best lap of 1m 36.905s.

“I’m happy with my current bike, which we were working on mostly today, especially on the electronic side and the information we gathered today will surely help us in the future,” Fernandez said.

“The runs that Raul made on his current bike showed gains in qualifying trim and fresh tyres, with fine tuning in the electronics settings,” Zeelenberg said.

Aleix Espargaro was the fastest Aprilia rider, in seventh place (+0.339s).