Having experimented with a carbon fibre MotoGP swingarm since May 2018ꦅ, Aleix Espargaro believes ♍Aprilia has now honed its design to the point of being race ready.

The new swingarm is one of a number of upgrades made to the RS-GP for this season, with the bike performing imp🐠ressively in Espargaro's hands during the Qatar tests so far, including fifth on the timesheets in Thursday's penultimate daꦛy.

"The problem was that at the beginning o💫f the project for the [carbon fibre] swinging arm, we were not able to make it exactly the same from one to the other," E🦩spargaro explained.

"Also at the beginning it looks like the carbon-fibre swingarm🐻 [should be] immediately lighter [than the aluminium] but it was not like this, because if you try at the beginning to find a good rigidity, we were not very good on the weight.

"But after some important work [Aprilia] have fo💧und the good way to do the swingarm, this year the rigidܫly is good and also the weight of the swingarm is better than the aluminium one.

"So I think we are on the good way. But it's just the b🤡eginning because this is the first pre-season for us using a carbon-fibre swingarm, so I'm sure that we still have to discover different things in thಌat area."

Ducati, Hond♐a and KTM exclusively use carbon-fibre swingarms. Yamaha also has new carbon fibre options available alongside the standard aluminium, while reigning champion's Suzuki have so far chosen to stick with aluminium.

Espargaro's team-mate Lorenzo Savadori was 2꧙3rd quickest on Thursday.