Melandri Splits With Aprilia, Replaced by Michael Laverty
Aprilia announced it has reached a mutual agreement to end its contract with racer Marco Melandri. Taking the Italian’s place immediately at this weekend’s MotoGP round at Sachsenring is British racer Michael Laverty.
The 2015 MotoGP season has been tough for both Melandri and Aprilia Racing Team Gresini. Aprilia acknowledged going into the season that 2015 will be a development year for its MotoGP program and the new RS-GP prototype.
Even with low expectations, Melandri’s performance has been underwhelming, with the former 250cc Grand Prix champion the only racer to have started every round this season that has not scored at least one championship point. His teammate, Alvaro Bautista has fared better, sitting 17th overall with 11 points.
Replacing Melandri is Laverty who last raced in MotoGP last season with the Paul Bird Motorsport team. Laverty has been competing in the 2015 British Superbike Championship, currently sitting sixth overall for the Tyco BMW squad.
“I’m excited to be back on the MotoGP grid this weekend of the German GP,” says Laverty. “Competing against the regular guys racing MotoGP is a tough task, but I am relishing the opportunity.”
“I have been riding with the Aprilia test team so I am comfortable with the Aprilia RS-GP machine and the Bridgestone tires,” says Laverty. “Firstly I must adapt the race bikes to suit me and then look to keep progressing throughout the weekend.”
[Source: Aprilia]
Dennis has been a part of the Motorcycle.com team since 2008, and through his tenure, has developed a firm grasp of industry trends, and a solid sense of what's to come. A bloodhound when it comes to tracking information on new motorcycles, if there's a new model on the horizon, you'll probably hear about it from him first.
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