We aim to finish No. 2 in 2025 MotoGP constructors' standings: Technical Director, Aprilia Racing

Having completed stints with Ducati and KTM in MotoGP, Fabiano Sterlacchini joined Aprilia Racing as its new Technical Director at the start of this season. The veteran has been instrumental in shaping the successes of his previous teams, and joins Aprilia as the factory-backed team looks at a more competitive year. With the championship well over the halfway mark, we caught up with Fabiano Sterlacchini to know about how the team is progressing since his arrival, and where we see the team finishing in this season’s MotoGP constructors' standings.

HT Auto: How's the experience been for you at Aprilia Racing so far, and what's different compared to Ducati and KTM?

Fabiano: Compared to Ducati, Aprilia is quite similar. Maybe it’s a matter of location and culture, and the people, and the scholastic background of the people. I would say that Aprilia is really similar to Ducati as a company. KTM was different in terms of the geographic point of view. This might seem like a silly statement, but their approach, being a company that was coming from the off-road, is quite different compared to road racing. Because clearly with road racing, you have is quite something in some ways simple for us, but probably not so obvious for all the other people. With road racing, you have the same track that is basically the same for 20 laps or 100 laps during the day, or 20 laps during the race. With the off-road, for example, every lap is a different track. Because you are modifying and destroying the track. So their approach, in terms of a statistical approach, is completely different. So I would say that basically it is an obsession to find some trend from a statistical point of view that we have in Aprilia, they had in Ducati. But in KTM it was different, it was more approach of trying and making some experiments, and seeing if the riders like it or not. I believe that in this moment, for the level of competition, we need to be more engineeriistic.

HT Auto: What changes have the bikes undergone since your arrival? What was the fundamental change from last year's bike to this year's bike?

Fabiano: So it's not the main thing that we change. We try to work strongly on one of the most critical points of the bike. Because we have nobody to guide the level of performance. One is the technical performance of the bike, and the other is how much the rider, without understanding, is actually on the bike. Because the bike is sometimes unpredictable. How much margin are they keeping from the real technical performance of the bike? First of all, we try to make the bike much easier to ride for the riders, especially because these margins sometimes are quite high.

So the stability at the exit and the stability in the entry are the aspects where we work the most, and we work on the side characteristics of the engine, in terms of the dynamics, for what we can change in the bike. Because the engine is sealed in terms of electronics, and what we work on the vehicle. We also changed the ergonomics. So we try to work on a lot of aspects. Nothing is completely out of what the project was at the beginning, before I arrived, but we clearly modified a lot of small things.

HT Auto: Now that you're working with Jorge Martin and Marco Bezzecchi, how's that experience been? What's your take on each of these riders and how they've progressed so far in the season?

Fabiano: Let me say that when I was at Ducati, for example, I never had the pleasure of working with them, because I was out of Ducati when they arrived. So I came across them the time that I started to work in Aprilia. Unfortunately, as we know the story, with Jorge, we didn't have any time to work together, because we had just had a first contact point in Barcelona. Then at Sepang (Malaysia), and then the race weekend, which was his return. So it was just to relax and try to find your limit. It's quite difficult to make any kind of judgment.

On the other hand, Marco has been an outstanding surprise. Looking from the outside, he seems to be easy, in terms of social attitude, super funny, super smart. But when he starts to work, he's unbelievable. He is super committed, super focused. He’s a maniac of any kind of detailing, what we can do in the bike and what we can improve in the bike. And even if we have some good performance, he’ll finish the race by commenting on something that could have been done better. And this is the right approach.

Marco Bezzecchi is currently placed third in the 2025 MotoGP rider standings behind Alex Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia

Share Via

Marco Bezzecchi is currently placed third in the 2025 MotoGP rider standings behind Alex Marquez and Francesco Bagnaia

HT Auto: And what about Lorenzo? Where do you fit him into the larger scheme of things?

Fabiano: Lorenzo is a super good guy in terms of talent and speed. When we started together, when he was replacing Martin in the fifth race. He was somehow unripe, not ready to be at that stage. We worked quite a lot with him, in terms of creating the right conditions that we see, to test a lot of things during the race weekend. Because the consistency of the rider is super important to be able to analyse data, to try to understand that we can gauge the difference in terms of physical parameters. So we work with him to try to be consistent, to improve the riding style and the repeatability of his riding.

But in the meantime, we tried to work on his speed. To be honest, we have been monitoring since the beginning of the season, the gap in terms of fastest lap time between who won the race and Lorenzo. We went in the beginning of the season from 2.2 seconds of gap to less than a second in the last three races. That for sure has been quite a good learning process for Lorenzo. On one side, to improve his speed, and on the other side, to try to dive into the problem. One important point of the test rider is not to just step off the bike and say, “I have a problem." But at a Friday test, you have to describe the solution that you tested.

If there is some interesting potential thing that we have to explore, or how we can compensate and help the rider to take the benefit of the solution. So, that is an important job, and for sure we did an improvement during the month. But obviously, we have to keep working. He's already at a good level of the job.

HT Auto: Where do you see Marco stepping out at the end of the season? He's currently playing sixth in the standings, but where do you see him finish by the end of the 2025 season?

Fabiano: I think that one of the targets should be immediately behind the three fastest Ducati riders. That’s something that could have been possible without the crash. But clearly, because with the 20 more points, we were in front of the other two. We were fourth. I believe that to be realistic with the clear challenge, a clear target, fourth in the championship in terms of rider championship, and second in the manufacture championship should be the target.

I'm not excluding because you know, several times in the past, the motorcycle war taught you not to keep yourself within some limit. Why not also aim to do something better? I believe that trying to finish third is not impossible. It's much more realistic to finish between fourth and fifth, rather than third, but third is not impossible.

HT Auto: How do you see the concessions affecting the team going forward?

Fabiano: With the points over the last race, we were probably closing the chapter now. Now it's still open, but we are speaking, if I'm not wrong, about 10 receiver points. So I think that probably here we could close the story without taking into consideration moving to Rank D. But in any case, if we have this opportunity, obviously, something that we will exploit for the next one. We jump from in Rank C to D, is basically due to the last six months. So in case we have the next three points at the end of the season, I believe that if we move to rank D, we can maintain it till the middle of 2026.

Aprilia is looking to conclude the 2025 MotoGP season in the top three in the riders' standings and in second place in the constructors' championship

Share Via

Aprilia is looking to conclude the 2025 MotoGP season in the top three in the riders' standings and in second place in the constructors' championship

HT Auto: How's the preparation going for the new regulations coming in from 2027?

Fabiano: We’ve started to walk in parallel because it’s a completely different project in terms of engine and everything around. We have a new engine because regulations are quite different. We have a new tyre, we have a new fuel. So basically, we have everything new. We start the job fixing some milestones of the project, some characteristics and specifications. It starts with changing, not because it's the most important thing, but because it's part of the project with a longer time in terms of period, basically weeks. So now the engineering is everything done in terms of designing the component. And basically, we suppose that arriving at the end of the season, we have some engine test, and then at the beginning of 2026, we keep working on the new project in parallel with the 2026 season. At a certain time, we will have to stop work on the 2026 season and focus on 2027 completely.

Check out Upcoming Bikes In India.