In a recent interview, Aprilia team boss Romano Albesiano, disclosed that they will be out of excuses for 2019, if the bike didn’t perform as expected. After signing Iannone for this coming season, Aprilia for the first time since their return, will feature a rider who has scored a Premier Class win, podiums and who has been part of the factory team.

Iannone will be bringing his professional experience from two years of working with Ducati and two more with Suzuki. This will be massive boost for the team like Aprilia, who is still in its developing years and augment their Journey to the top spot of the podium.

In last two seasons Aprilia had a very weak line up in the form of Sam Lowes-Aleixa Espargaro and then Aleixa Espargaro-Scott Redding. In both years the point gap between teammates grew to an extent that at times it felt like Aleixa had been riding a whole new bike and was beating his teammates with an ease. But now with the arrival of Iannone, Aleixa himself will have a better benchmark performance and teammate from which he can actually learn many things.

In an interview with motorsport.com tech chief Albesiano admitted, now that a race winner has joined the team so, its was last piece to their team’s performance gap puzzle and they will have all the ingredients to perform well and will be out of excuses for the poor performance.

"We had different expectations for this season, especially after the end of 2017, when we checked in regularly at TOP10 and were close to the top five. Honestly, something went wrong with the design of that motorcycle, we lost something when it came to balance, we suffered a lot. It was not obvious from the very beginning. The players had many problems to understand what is necessary to improve the situation, " said Albesiano.

Moreover, with the signing of experienced Bradley Smith arriving from KTM, who will take the developmental role at the team, all is set for Aprilia Racing Team Gresini and management has been strengthen as well with the arrival of Ex-Ferrari man, who has decades of experience in Formula 1- Massimo Rivola will be taking role of CEO, he had been the part of team Minardi and Toro Rosso before joining as head of Ferrari’s driver’s academy.

"Nice to see that Andrea had fantastic results. We know that now we will not have excuses. I am very excited, I know we have potential and we will have all the ingredients to create a good recipe for the next year. " - he added

Tech chief is looking forward to receiving the data from his newly signed riders, and said that their feedback will be critical in developing the bike at the rate of top teams. He pointed out that Aprilia has a completely different engine and bike’s design, and Iannone and Smith arriving from different teams will certainly help it develop in the best way possible.