Aprilia

Take care.

Well, we've just had the most amazing tour at the Trackhouse Aprilia garage.

Uh, we're actually in here.

That's a Moto2 race starting behind us.

It's not very often you get to come in a garage and film like this, so-

And-

... huge thanks to Aprilia Trackhouse

...

However, when we went there last year, he was pushed.

He was pushed all the way by Marco Bizzecchi, by Aprilia, when they were on the up.

They were a coming force.

It was a similar stage of the season to last year.

Well, actually, over it, he crashed in the sprint race.

And then he won, but he had Bezeki on his heels the whole of the race on Sunday.

So that's Mark on top of his game, being pushed by Bezeki, with an Aprilia that was already coming up, but probably not as good as it is now.

So we're going to Mizano now, where Bezeki just performed... like much much better than last year in aragon so you know the progresses are there we know it's a bit of his back garden as well because he lives right next to the track and that's where they train with the vr 46 and so on and mark is well he's he he's just one in aragon but he's not the dominating mark that we've seen last year he's got that injury he's got to manage and even in a good tracks like aragon he's still having to manage it in a really clever way you know, putting the pace when he needs to.

They're going to have a direction to go.

But then again, I think, you know, you had these high power teams, Honda factory team, you know, Ducati's factory team, Aprilia's factory team.

They're all going to be able to sit there and go, okay, well, it should be like this.

They're going to run all these simulations.

I mean, you can say, you can say that Ben Yaya is kind of phoning it in, but he's not, he's actually really trying.

Ben Yaya is actually really trying.

I mean, you can look at it from the outside and say, well, he's got this Aprilia contract.

And if you don't know what's really going on, you could say, well, and then he's in first qualifying again.

Can we ever talk, speaking of bikes now, what was the first joke you had? You said something a minute ago about NSR75s and that, did you?

I think the first joke I had on the road was the Aprilia SR50.

My dad bought my sister one for her 16th and then I would have got it the following year for me and It wasn't long before I was on a Honda at the back of that because it was just a previous absolute scrap.

I was straight on to an NSR80.

Are we going to see something similar out there this weekend, Lewis?

I think Aprilia will probably have more of an advantage over Mark and Ducati this time around than they did last year.

The bike's in a better place.

I think Bez is a bit more fired up now.

I think Kimi Antonelli's win at the weekend at Monzo probably spurred him on a bit as well.

He was obviously there.

So, yeah, I think Aprilia will have the advantage.

I mean, it'll be interesting to see how Mark goes.