Aprilia still backing Melandri but cracks are clear

Marco Melandri made no secret of his thoughts about returning to MotoGP throughout last year and in Sepang he endured another miserable test and finished slowest of all and over four seconds off the pace.

With Alvaro Bautista setting mid pack times, over two seconds faster than Melandri, it’s clear that the Aprilia is capable of much more than Melandri is able to perform at the moment. Melandri’s talent is not in question, had he remained in World Superbike he arguably would have started the season as the title favourite, but his lack of comfort on the MotoGP Aprilia was clear all week in Malaysia.

Team manager, Romano Albesiano, knows that Melandri has the talent to succeed again in MotoGP but that speed wasn’t the primary goal for Aprilia returning him to the Grand Prix paddock. Melandri’s experience and ability to develop a bike was the motivation and that rebuilding Melandri’s confidence will be key for the early season races and if he can’t do that his suitability with the team will be questioned.

“It is a matter of confidence in the bike for Marco. We’re trying to help him to build his confidence,” said Albesiano. “We have to work hard to help him build his confidence. We wanted him on this bike because we know that he can be fast and that he can help is to develop the bike.”

With Bautista the bike worked well and he looks confident on the bike and is settling into his role as team leader and in his hands the bike worked well.

“The bike is well balanced and we are improving and it seems that our race pace is especially good. We need to do normal things with the bike, for example Alvaro would the bike to turn more and have more traction but with the electronics and the Bridgestone tyres we need to work.”

Melandri was runner-up in the 2005 MotoGP championship and has won races in 125s, 250s, MotoGP and World Superbikes but this week he admitted that he has struggled to adapt to MotoGP and that he has had to change his mindset from being a racer to instead focusing on developing the bike and approaching the test as a “test rider and not a racer.”

“There’s a lot of work to do,” said Melandri. “We just have to look calmly and improve things gradually, when the feeling is better I will try to be faster . When you feel you can do certain things but you can’t do them it’s frustrating. You realize that you’re just a passenger and you can’t force it. It’s hard, so I tried to change my mentality.

“The work to be done is not to go fast, but to fix things . We still have no definitive motorcycle, we have adapted some parts of the bike in 2015 on 2014 and things have gone a bit ‘differently than we expected. In some respects we are improving, on others not . “

After the first Sepang test there were rumours that Aprilia would look at their options with Melandri and would evaluate whether or not a return to World Superbikes would be the best option. When asked about these rumours Albesiano dismissed them instantly by telling MCN:

“We have not thought of a change with Jordi [Torres] and we’ll just work on helping Marco, he has the potential to do well in MotoGP . You have to figure out how long it will take to succeed. We evaluated where we need to improve and now we have to focus on these. We hope to be already ready for Qatar.”

Torres made a very strong debut in World Superbikes the Spaniard is much less likely to agree to moving to MotoGP now that he knows he has the speed to fight at the front in WSBK and as a result is much less likely to view a move as a positive career step than he would have been following Sepang 1.

Michael Laverty having impressed the team in his role of test rider in Sepang 1 and he will get some wild card rides through the season but as things stand Aprilia confirmed to MCN that they have not made any plans yet for Laverty to race through the season “Unless we have something specific to test.”

So for the moment at least it appears that Melandri and Aprilia will have to try and find a solution together and improve the bike with the early season fly away races likely to give an indication of how willing they will be to remain together.