The Piaggio Group has decided to do a major reshuffle inside Aprilia Racing’s management, appointing Massimo Rivola as the new Aprilia Racing CEO. The former Formula 1 Sporting Director for teams such as Minardi, Toro Rosso or Ferrari, will assume his new role in Aprilia Racing starting January 7th.
At 47 years of age, Massimo Rivola brings to Aprilia Racing a host of technical knowledge accumulated over 21 years in Formula 1, where he worked with drivers such as Fernando Alonso or Sebastian Vettel. Since moving away from F1, Rivola has been the mastermind behind Ferrari Drivers Academy, helping the Maranello manufacturer to find the next Formula 1 stars.
And what does this mean for Aprilia’s MotoGP project?
Well, over the last season the MotoGP project for the Italian team suffered much more than expected. Even with the occasional good results from Aleix Espargaró, the results were bad over the entire season, with the RS-GP prototype still suffering from performance problems.
The Piaggio Group, which owns Aprilia, decided to invest heavily in this racing project and gave Aprilia Racing a boost by signing Italian rider Andrea Iannone to become Espargaro teammate next season. At the same time, the tam is now led by a new CEO, Massimo Rivola, who surely will try to bring F1 technology to the MotoGP world and help in the development of the bike.
Massimo Rivola will be responsible for managing the racing department as a whole, while Romano Albesiano, until now the most important person in Aprilia Racing management, will stay with the team but specifically dedicated to the technical aspects during each race.
With this reshuffle, Aprilia Racing is now even committed to improve their results next season.