Aprilia's much heralded return to the World Superbike arena this past season for the first time since 2002 with the all-new RSV4 must have brought great satisfaction for them, with fourth place in the final points table for prodigal son Max Biaggi, riding once again for the factory he won a hat-trick of 250GP World titles for in 1994-96. This came on the back of a debut race victory for the RSV4 at his favourite Brno track, and a total of nine visits to the rostrum during the course of the season.
The chance to ride Biaggi's works RSV4 Superbike at Mugello during the Aprilia team's final tests before the end of September revealed a bike with an impressive step up in performance from the RSV4 Factory streetbike I'd ridden during the Misano press launch back in April. After the best part of a season spent in what Aurelia's Direttore Tecnico, Gigi Dall'Igna, summarizes as "gathering data, chasing setups, improving throttle response and midrange torque, and resolving a chattering problem that plagued us until Brno, all while trying to win at least one race!", the factory team had refined what from the very outset was always a fast motorcycle. Hence Biaggi's pair of rostrum finishes in just the second round of the championship at Qatar. The RSV4 was very evidently a bike that was "born well", as they say in Italy.
Straddling the Aprilia in pit lane while the factory race engineers plugged in a MotoGP-style starter to the right side of the bike, I noticed that while it certainly carried his bodywork and name lettered on the upper triple clamp, the RSV4 had been slightly sanitized compared to other Biaggi bikes I've ridden in the past. Gone was the hard thick pad at the back of the seat he uses to wedge himself forward. Gone too was the street-pattern gearshift Max always uses, in favor of a race-pattern shift that better suited Aprilia tester Alex Hoffmann, the German former MotoGP rider who checked out the bike before I took it over, and who's been one of those responsible for bringing the RSV4 along so fast in testing. In spite of the Aprilia's compact build, it felt surprisingly accommodating for a taller rider. The clip-ons were Max's usual steeply angled numbers, and with a tall rear ride height putting a lot of body weight on your arms and wrists, the Aprilia's riding stance was definitely aggressive.
How fast is the RSV4? How about two monster sixth gear powerwheelies at the end of the kilometer-long Mugello main straight, where I'd found the brow of a little hill that I'd never noticed before on any of the many factory Superbikes I've tested there down the years? Telemetry readings confirmed that both wheelies happened at over 186 mph; the first when I shifted into top gear before the brow, so presumably found myself fat in the torque curve when I crested it, with predictable results. Up came the front wheel at 188 mph, said the datalogger, and to make matters worse the quite stiff headwind blowing off the mountains got underneath the fairing, and threatened to flip the Aprilia over backwards. The second time I was ready for the wheelie, and stomped on the rear brake to keep the front end down, before using both brakes again to slow for the second gear hairpin just afterward. The Aprilia slowed controllably from such high speeds and hard braking with all the stability in the world; no wobbles or weaves as the front Brembos did their stuff.