Aprilia Racing boss Romano Albesiano is convinced that▨ the new breed of MotoGP fairings with 'integrated winglets' offer a performance advantage, as the facಞtory works on its remaining update for the 2017 season.

With external wings now banned, manufacturers have꧅ been forced to incorporate downforce devices within a 'normal' fairing profile. An initial design was allowed alongside a standard fairing for the start of the season, with one further upgrade availab🏅le.

Aprilia, Suzuki, Yamaha and KTM (exempt from the upgrade limit) have already used a special fairing during a grand prix weekend, but the reception from 😼the riders has generally been lukewarm at best.

Maverick Vinales took victory with the Yamaha device at Le Mans, ✱but the other races have all been won with standard fairings. Honda and Ducati are yet to even homologate a 'down🐷force' design for use in a GP.

"It looks liꦑke now the fairing is not of so much interest to anybody. But from a theoretical point of view, it's surely a good point. An advantage," said Albesiano, who worked as a aerodynamicist earlier in his career. "So we have to make this thing accepted by the riders, like [the wings] were last year. I believe in this concept and we will keep working on it."

Of the RS-GP riders, only rookie𒊎 Sam Lowes has put in serious track time with Aprilia's special fairing. Team leader Aleix Espargaro is yet to be convinced the extra stability is worth a potential loss of top speed (which canned Ducati's radical design) and 'heavier' feeling.

Asked if the Aprilia upgrade would be an evolution of the ဣcurrent design or a step in a different direction, now that other m༺anufacturers have unveiled their concepts, Albesiano replied:

"We believe [our] concept is very good. The results in the wind tunnel are very good, also when Sam tested back-to-back this device he al🐬ways wanted to keep it.

"So we need to work. Of course the priority has been reduced because only on🍬e ride🍌r of the two uses it, so we push less, but we have something to test [in Catalunya] in order to understand more about the concept and we will keep working on it."

"I've used it since Jerez at every track," Lowes confirmed. "Maybe we wi🉐ll have something to try at the test, the same principle, but not affect the top speed as much. It's only maybe 1-1.5km/h anyway.

"I feel the benefit on the exit of corners, especially long corners. It's a little bit heavier to enter the corners, which is what Aleix doesn't like. But Mugello you need to get into all the corners and it wasn't too bad. I think that shows we can use it everywhere. Maybe not Philli⛦p Island, with the wind. We'll see. It might look a lot different by [October] anyway..."

Albesiano also confirmed that creating efficient dဣownforce is much more complicated under the new rules.

"Before you could just design a couple of winglets, wing profiles, and once you had understood a litt꧒le bit the flow in the front of the fairing... it was cheap and easy. Now you have to make CFD [Computational Fluid Dynamics, software that simulates air flow] calculations in a quite complicated way," he said.

"Honestly the wings that we had l♋ast year were 𒆙quite dangerous. I agree. Because it was so easy to 'hang' another bike. That could have been fixed in another way. But anyway..."

April꧋ia has a best finish of sixth so far this season, but the team felt Espargaro had the pace to fight Lorenzo for fourth (the RS-GP's best ever result) without an engine failure in the Catalunya race.

It was a bitter disappointment to both team and rider, but Albesiano managed some humour when asked what had g♋one wrong:

"It was an electrical problem! You know the story? Many years ago when the conrod exited the crankcase and cut ꦓthe wire, it was an 'electrical problem'!

"No, it was a problem with the pneumatic system for the valve spring. We've had this prob♈lem a couple of times before so we have to fi🎃x it definitely.

"It's not a matter of re-designing, it's a matter of small points in the valve train that we have to maybe re-consider. These parts have worked for a long time, so now something new is happening that w✅e have to understand.

"The system is the same as last year and we never had th🍷is problem."