Aprilia’s 2026 MotoGP season has been nothing short of remarkable, with the RS-GPs regularly featuring at the sharp end of the grid. We sat down with Technical Director Fabiano Sterlacchini to understand what’s driving that performance, and what the team is building toward as MotoGP prepares for a regulatory reset in 2027.
Q: Since you joined the team, the RS-GP has gone from race-winner to genuine championship contender. Is there one specific area where you feel you’ve brought the most progress?
Sterlacchini: Not really, to be honest. As I always said, it’s super important in motorsport that you don’t have any weak points. You have to work in parallel in any area of development – in our case, the aerodynamic, the electronic, the chassis behaviour, and the engine performance.
What we did was (address) some specific topics. For example, the stability of the bike. This has probably been one of the crucial points, because now the bike is much more calm than before, and for the rider it’s much more easy to push to the limit.
Because you can have two approaches. One, you are changing the limit of the bike, but it’s unpredictable, so the rider is keeping a margin. Or, you are not changing the limit, but you are making this limit more predictable, so the rider is reducing the margin and you are increasing the real performance. We worked for sure in this area. And in the meantime, we worked quite intensively across some areas but, I would say, in a balanced way – aerodynamic, electronic, chassis. We brought evolution in every area, and probably this is the secret of the gradient of growth.
Q: There’s been a lot of talk about the F-duct innovation – something clever that technically anybody could have found, but Aprilia did first. Is that something you intentionally look for in the regulations, or does it happen organically?
Sterlacchini: At the end of the day, it’s not a real loophole or workaround. It’s just an interpretation of the basic concept of the regulation. It was inspired by some brainstorming we did in the company – we decided to do something driven by the movement of the rider. But this is normal.
For example, during braking, you have the drag that is super low because the rider is laid down to the fuel tank, but in the meantime, when the rider is braking, he is raising the body – generating what we call normally the parachute effect. This is typical, and probably this is the biggest difference between a Formula One car and MotoGP – the interaction of the rider body in the aerodynamics is super important.
Thinking about this, we wanted to find something that didn’t force the rider to assume some strange position on the bike, because this is not correct – apart from being legal or not legal, it is not correct. And strategically, we brought the solution as late as possible in the season to avoid that someone was inspired by our solution.
So to reply to your question – compliant to the regulation, we try to invent a solution. And let me joke – rather than call it the F-duct, in our case I would call it the elbow duct, because the rider is pushing the elbow to close the duct. It’s a better name.
Q: Ducati has six bikes on the grid this season, Aprilia has four. In terms of data collection, is that a disadvantage?
Sterlacchini: You know, there are pros and cons. Clearly you can have more riders, so more information, but you have to manage and handle this information. And sometimes having too much information can – to be more fully transparent – makes chaos.
In our situation, I believe having four riders is a really good compromise. You can have a quite light and tiny structure, so it is more efficient. But in the meantime, you have a statistical base of four riders that you can cross-test and confirm. I don’t think there is a big advantage either way. Obviously, if you ask me between four and eight, I would say four. Between four and six – with the right structure to go deep into the data with the proper resources – probably with six you can have a small advantage.
Q: Three major things are changing in 2027 – the engine, the aerodynamic regulations, and the switch to Pirelli tyres. The tyres are a variable you can’t fully control yet. Does that limit the decisions you can make right now?
Sterlacchini: Yes, for sure. Because basically all our considerations, to decide from scratch on paper which will be the new layout of the bike, are always based on the characteristics of the tyre. And now, the characteristics we are considering are basically (that of) Michelin. We did some tests already with Pirelli. To be honest, luckily, they are not so different. They are performing quite well.
So I suppose the assumptions we made in terms of the project will not be so different from what we did assuming the tyre was Michelin. For sure it’s not in our control. But if from zero to 100 the tires were identical, you can use 100 in both projects. Considering the jump from Michelin to Pirelli, and the differences between them – it’s not zero, because they are completely different – probably we are around 85. So some adjustment, but nothing crazy.
Q: Is there a possibility the 2027 bike could eventually match the pace of the current generation?
Sterlacchini: No, it’s impossible that the 2027 bike could be faster than the 2026 bike – for several reasons. For sure, the downsize of the engine, but also the down-boring. The engine performance will be less than just the reduction of the cubic displacement. The displacement is reduced by 15%, but the loss in thermal power will be more than 15%.
And in the meantime, all the bikes you see on the track now are not compliant to the current 2027 regulation, and this will have an impact. We also don’t have the ride-height device in the future. So with the different aerodynamic shapes, the less power, and without the ride-height device – I believe at least we need to wait between three to five years to reasonably reach the same level.
Obviously, at some tracks like Sachsenring or Aragon, where the performance loss from removing the ride-height device and the less power is marginal – if the Pirelli tyre develops in a way that compensates the difference, probably we can arrive at the same level in the shorter term. But Mugello, Sepang, Spielberg – where you have a lot of time in engine limit – clearly we need decades.
Q: It feels like the momentum may be shifting away from Ducati, at least for now. Do you think the regulations are coming at an unfortunate time, or are there enough learnings to carry forward?
Sterlacchini: Basically both. Clearly, once you are at the right moment with a good gradient of growth, it’s based on your project. And now we are upsetting the milestones – the ride-height device, the aerodynamic shapes, the different tyres. To be honest, clearly it is a trigger point. Rather than carrying on in this path and growing with the same philosophy, now we have to change the philosophy.
But in the meantime, all the processes we have installed in the company – how we develop the aerodynamics, how we develop the engine, how we develop the electronics – you can bring all of this to the new project. In terms of methodology, approach, knowledge, know-how. Keeping the same project, you can use basically 100. With a new project, you can probably use between 70 and 80. So you are not completely losing the good things that you did.
