Trackhouse riders to debut Aprilia upgrade at Austrian MotoGP

Trackhouse Aprilia riders Raul Fernandez and Ai Ogura will debut their in-season fairing upgrade at this weekend’s Austrian Grand Prix.

Only one fairing upgrade per season is allowed for Ducati, Aprilia and KTM riders under the MotoGP concession rules.

The latest RS-GP fairing is aimed at ‘improving aerodynamic efficiency and stability’, with the team hopeful it will give both riders 'greater performance and confidence'.

“We are looking forward to this round as we will get some further updates from Aprilia and hopefully this will help our riders even more,” said Trackhouse team principal Davide Brivio.

“Raul has been in a great moment and has been doing great in the last rounds with a top-five performance in Brno.

“This break I think has been quite useful for Ai to be fully recovered after the injury he had and the last races.

“We are really looking forward to Austria to hopefully be in the best shape with the latest updates and see what we can do.”

Fernandez has finished inside the top ten at the past four rounds, including a season-best fifth place just before the summer break in Brno, lifting him to 13th in the world championship and on course for his strongest MotoGP campaign to date.

“After the summer break I’m happy to be back racing,” Fernandez said. “Of course, the second part of the season will be very hard, but I prepared very well. We are very focused on these next two races, especially Austria as I know it hasn’t been a good track for me in the MotoGP class.

“But anyway, we come with really good progress in recent races and I would like to keep this going. We’ll have some tracks that are better for us and some that are a bit difficult. The Red Bull Ring is one that will be difficult, but I aim to take the maximum, in the race and especially trying to do a decent job from Friday.”

Rookie team-mate Ogura made an impressive start to his debut season with fourth in the Buriram Sprint and fifth in the grand prix, followed by further top tens.

However, his progress was hampered by a heavy Silverstone crash that left him with a fractured right tibia.

Since then, the Japanese rider’s best result has been tenth, and he has dropped to 16th in the standings.

“I think the Red Bull Ring is a good circuit to start the second half,” Ogura said. “It’s a track I like and in past years I was riding quite OK there. The layout is stop-and-go and I believe it’s going to be really difficult to understand everything to go fast, but I think once you understand all, I think it’s an easy track to go fast.

“So, I’ll try to be smart on Friday, use the sessions as much as I can. As everybody knows, Friday is an important day, so I’ll try to not miss anything, use the time to the maximum.

“Anyway, I like the country and the circuit, so let’s have fun for this first round of the second half. In this second half of the season there’ll be a lot of good circuits for me, so I’ll try to do the maximum for this Grand Prix and see which position we can get on Sunday.”