In the year that the RSV4 will celebrate its 10th anniversary, Aprilia won’t have a single RSV4 RF competing in the World Superbike championship! This is the result of SMR team, led by Shaun Muir, opting to race BMW machinery instead of the current RSV4 RF bikes with Eugene Laverty and Lorenzo Savadori.
Shaun Muir tried to play all his cards with Aprilia during the long Summer break, saying in public that his team had the possibility to stay with Aprilia, but also said, trying to put pressure on the Noale factory, that SMR team could also switch to Ducati or even BMW.
But the SMR team never really had the means (i.e.: the money!) to keep the current partnership with Aprilia Racing, and when Shaun Muir lost the Milwaukee sponsorship, he tried to get Aprilia to accept a new deal: supply the bikes, the technicians and the spare parts to race the RSV4’s in the World Superbike championship, free of charge!
Obviously, the Noale factory didn’t accept these terms and the offer was immediately refused.
Left without the Ducati option, Muir now signed a new deal with BMW to race with the new S1000RR in 2019, but for now it remains to be seen what kind of factory support SMR team will get from the German brand, if they ever get any real factory support at all. This deal is, reportedly, much cheaper compared to the one SMR had with Aprilia Racing.
Fans will be pointing the finger to the big Piaggio Group that leads Aprilia in a tight leash since acquiring the brand, but the fact is that Piaggio Group still wants to see their RSV4 RF bikes racing against the best machines in the superbike segment and at a world level.
The problem is that there’s no team that has the technical know-how and the ability to cover the costs of running the RSV4 bikes, and sponsors are already taken by other manufacturers or teams.