90° RS-GP (1,000-cc V4 four-stroke): 2020 to Present
APRILIA’S MOMENT OF MotoGP revolution came in 2019, when parent company Piaggio decided that it must go big or go home. In other words, start spending proper money on its MotoGP project or quit.
The result of that change of philosophy was a huge technical advance, when the Noale factory created its 2020 RS-GP, the first iteration with a 90-degree V4 engine. Switching from a narrow-angle vee to a wider-angle vee changed everything and made perfect sense, because Ducati and Honda were dominating with their own 90-degree V4s.
Aleix Espargaro, who scored the company’s first MotoGP victory at this year’s Argentine GP, remembers the moment he first rode the new bike during 2020 pre-season testing at Sepang.
‘I did three laps, came into the garage, and I was crying,’ recalls the 32-year-old Spaniard who joined Aprilia in 2017. ‘I told the engineers, “This is the best bike you ever made, it’s crazy, unbelievably good!”. I was crying because, at the end of 2019, I was thinking of retiring, because with the old bike it was impossible to be fast.
‘Actually, we couldn’t start the new bike at Sepang because the starter didn’t have enough power
