Aprilia hoping to take off with Alitalia
Added on Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 by Carole Nash Editor
Aprilia hoping to take off with Alitalia
Aprilia will be flying high with Italian flag carrier Alitalia in the 2010 World Superbike Championship after the airline was confirmed as the team’s official sponsor at a launch ceremony in Rome.
The new Alitalia Aprilia livery was unveiled at Rome’s Fiumicino airport this afternoon and the team was in bullish mood about their chances for 2010, despite going into only their second year in WSB.
“We have a great tradition to uphold; it is a tough challenge that comes after a 2009 season in which Aprilia exceeded our expectations, proving its competitiveness with three world MotoGP titles and surprising everyone with its results in the Superbike series,” said Aprilia Racing Director Leo Francesco Mercanti. “These successes justify great ambitions and expectations; to fulfil them will be a great challenge. It is difficult to make predictions at the beginning of a season, but we have prepared well for the challenge, working hard and improving on every front”.
The unveiling was also an emotional occasion for Italian rider Max Biaggi, on whom most of Aprilia’s hopes will be riding when the season gets underway in Australia later this month.
“The presentation of a new season, of a bike with new colours, is always very emotional for a rider – it’s like witnessing the birth of a living creature,” he claimed.
“It will be an honour to carry these prestigious colours onto the circuits of the whole world – a tricolour that will make both the bike and team unique.
“Aprilia did a fantastic job in 2009, we made giant strides from a technical standpoint, which were made possible by the whole team and by the work that let the debuting RSV4 make progress race after race. The win at Brno was just the crowning moment of a continuous process of growth. Of course, we were the great surprise of the 2009 season, and I am really happy with the results; nobody could ever have predicted that we would be so competitive at our debut, nobody would ever have expected a fourth place season finish. And yet I still feel as if the greatest satisfactions are still to come, we haven’t reached the top yet – only a win will really crown it all for me.”
New teammate and former British Superbike champion Leon Camier added: “Being a part of this team, a part of the RSV4 project, is an incredible opportunity for me. This championship will be very tough, with extremely high levels of competitiveness. I’ll be racing against some outstanding, highly experienced riders. This is why it is so important to be in a team like Aprilia Alitalia, one of the very few that offer a rider extraordinary opportunities in terms of developing the bike. My first impressions of the RSV4 were phenomenal: it has enormous potential and is a very quick bike. Now, I must first get as much experience as possible to fully exploit the potential that Aprilia puts in the hands of the rider.”
