As they say, there is no rest for the wicked. Having tested at Mugello and Le Mans before the Spanish Grand Prix, Aprilia is back on track at the Circuit of Catalunya as it pre🌺pares for its all-important home race at Mugello.

Both Aleix Espargaro and Sam Lowes were on track on Tuesday, and again today [Wednesday], with a new seamless gearbox among the items on the 🦩test list, as the factory seeks to boost the acceleration of its RS-GP racer.

One of Espargaro's common complaints since joining the Noale factory last November is the machine's la🍎ck of drive on corner exit, where it loses significant ground to other manufacturers🐲.

This has made the op༺ening to the year's five MotoGP races complicated for the Aprilia men. While strong and consistent on new rubber, the machine is not able to exploit the extra grip of new tyres, making it a struggle to hold statio🔜n early in the race.

Along with the new transmission, Espargaro and Lowes worked on diffeꦓrent e❀lectronics strategies to enable more power in the lower part of the machine's rev range.

"Today I focused on the electronics," explained Espargaro, a retirement when holding a strong top ten position at Le Mans. "We tried many things to understand if we had some pow🐎er in the bottom, because what we're missing the most, at especially the beginning of the race, we have more grip from the tyre, I cannot use it because we're limited by power.

"The bike doesn't accelerate. The engineer say we have more power but we are not using it under 12,000 RPM. We're trying to use it and understand how to use more power in the botto൩m.

"Tomorrow we have new pieces to try. We have a new swingarm, a new fairing, because I didn't try it since Qatar. We have many things. For me the most important thing is to improve the feeling with the bumps and toඣ get better acceleration."

On whether the seamless would eradicate some of those acceleration issues, he added, "The seamless can be a little better in the high when you change for the next gear, maybe it's a little bit easier. So yeah𒁃, finally the speed is better. But the pure acceleration from the bottom, I don't think this can improve."

Meanwhile, Lowes explained the new transmission is useful at a track like the Circuit of Catalunya, where short straights necessitate the need to short-shift up through the gears. He too explained the need🐠 to work through electronics strategies in order to smoothen the power delivery in the low rev range.

"We had a new gearbox this morning which was good," he said on Tuesday evening. "That'll be the direction for two or three races time. It's just a bit faster change, not so much on the backshift, but it's good. Especially here, there are a lot o꧙f places where you short shift. It's a good step.

"That'll be a good step for us. Our gearbox is already quite good but I think we're a bit behind. Everyone has made a bigger step, so this will bring us up𝐆 to their level again. Obviously that helps with acceleration as well.

"We're still missing a bit on the bottom [e🀅nd of the RPM range]. On a MotoGP bike you hardly ever have one-to-one connection because you've got so mucജh power. So we're trying to manage the power differently, so when we've got low RPM, it doesn't come in in a big way.

"It's something both ri🐲ders are working on. Some of the installation stuff, me a little more. Aleix is also trying stuff so it's going in the right way. I definitely felt in some of the slower corners it's a bit easier to get on with a bit more push. Before we had nothing and then a push.

"It always seemed to come at the wrong time and then you'd have a lot of shaking. Both of us give a little [throttle] and the🐷n everything because we don't feel enough push. Then it catches up with you. You say you've got too much power but it's the way that it comes in. We're working on that a lot, especially for this race, because it's so hard on tyres."