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Romano Albesiano has stepped up this year to the role of Aprilia Racing manager and he is the man in charge of overseeing the World Superbike project and race operations of the Italian brand in the series. After nine rounds completed, Albesiano is overall happy by the performance of the team’s line-up for this year: “Sylvain has had a good season so far, he has made a step forward compared to last year as he already won two races. He is fighting again for the championship and he is doing what we were expecting from him. Marco had some problems adapting to the motorcycle at the beginning but we worked hard together, we finally found a good solution and now he is racing at his best.”

Albesiano of course was not happy about the collision between Melandri and Guintoli in the wet race two at Portimao a month ago, that has cost the team some important points for the title race: “It was a mistake, a big one. It happens, especially when you have two top riders and you don’t give team orders. It happened first to Kawasaki, then to us. We are definitely not happy with it, but we must accept it. The riders have talked about it in a peaceful way after the crash and it’s all behind us now.”

Team orders are not in the agenda of the Italian squad, if not in a rare and specific occasions, “We thought about giving team orders a lot, but we still believe it’s not worth to be done now. I think these kinds of decisions are a little bit against the sport and we don’t like them very much. We will see how the situation will shape up, I reckon it should happen only in exceptional cases.”