Aprilia's ground-effect can help racers and trackday fans ride faster than ever, here's how it works

The current crop of MotoGP bikes look more like spaceships than motorcycles due to advancements in aerodynamics and its increasingly important role in cutting lap times to the absolute minimum.

With MotoGP bikes pushing out 300bhp and running control tyres, the gains to be found using aero to allow the rider to best exploit the performance of both the tyres and engine during acceleration and braking can be the difference between first and last place.

Pioneered by Ducati technical genius Gigi Dall’Igna, since 2015 aero wings have become commonplace on both the MotoGP and World Superbike grids and are appearing on more and more road bikes. And not just sportsbikes, some super-nakeds also come with wings. But now there is a new aero device in town: ground-effect.

Introduced by Aprilia in the 2022 season, ground-effect has been utilised in F1 since the late 1960s to ‘stick’ the cars to the track, most notably by the 1978 title-winning Lotus 79. So how does it work?

Ground-effect is created by using channels and shapes to alter the speed of the airflow around a vehicle and follows the Bernoulli principle. The faster air flows, the lower its pressure, and vice-versa.

By manipulating how the air flows around a vehicle, a venturi effect is created which leads to negative pressure and effectively ‘sucks’ the vehicle into the ground.

While this is fairly easy to exploit on a car as it remains flat to the ground, bikes lean over, making it much more complex to harness.

Aprilia’s system only works during cornering when the moulded fairing on the bike’s flanks runs parallel to the ground (roughly 60-degrees of angle, close to maximum lean).

The gap between the fairing and the ground becomes a channel and because the tarmac is flat and the bike’s fairing is moulded into a curve to speed up the airflow over it, negative pressure is created in the space in between, increasing grip and therefore allowing the bike to corner faster than it would without the aeros fitted.

Through long, fast corners when the benefits of ground-effect can be exploited to the max, the Aprilias have been noticeably faster than their rivals. And now, with the launch of the Aprilia RSV4 X Ex3ma, trackday riders can experience ground-effect too.

As well as the usual downforce aero (think an inverted aircraft wing) created by the stepped front wing, which helps reduce wheelies under acceleration and stabilises the bike during braking and at speed, the RSV4 X Ex3ma has a ground-effect fairing with added aero on its mudguard and under the swingarm.

It’s a world-first for a motorcycle available for the public to buy and Aprilia claim this innovative fairing creates three times more lateral load than the fairing on the already exclusive Aprilia RSV4 X Trenta model, launched in 2022.

Add to this the effect of the 550mm wide front wing, which Aprilia say generates five-times more downforce, and the new RSV4 X Ex3ma is the most aerodynamically-advanced motorcycle outside of MotoGP.

Want to order one? Visit factoryworks.aprilia.com for more.