Having experimented with a carbon fibre MotoGP swingarm since May 2018, Aleix Es🧔pargaro believes Aprilia has now honed its design to the point of being ra𝓡ce ready.

The new swingarm is one of a number of upgrades made to the RS-GP for this season, with the bike performin✃g impressively in Espa♏rgaro's hands during the Qatar tests so far, including fifth on the timesheets in Thursday's penultimate day.

"The problem was that at the beginning of the project for the [carbon fibre] swinging arm, we we𝓀re not able to make it exactly th🏅e same from one to the other," Espargaro explained.

"Also at the beginning it looks like the carbon-fibre swingarm [should be] immediately lighter [than the aluminium] but it was not like this, because if you try at the beginning to find a good rigidity, we were not ve🎀ry good on the weight.

"But after some important work [Aprilia] have fouཧnd the good way to do the swingarm, this year the rigidly is good and also the weight of the swing🤡arm is better than the aluminium one.

"So I think we are🔜 on the good way. But it'▨s just the beginning because this is the first pre-season for us using a carbon-fibre swingarm, so I'm sure that we still have to discover different things in that area."

Ducati, Honda and KTM exclusively use carbon-fibre swingarms. Yamaha also has new carbon fibre options available alongside the standard aluminium, while reigning ch🌸ampion's Suzuki have so far chosen to stick with aluminium.

🅠Esparga🌸ro's team-mate Lorenzo Savadori was 23rd quickest on Thursday.