My Aprilia
When I blew my motor in the last race of the 2003 season I started looking for somethimg new to race. I loved racing the YSR but after 3 years I wanted something new. I bought a 1998 Aprilia RS50 from a rookie racer at the track. I wanted the Aprilia because it was almost a full sized bike. The seat height was almost the same as my R6 and my main goal in racing was to improve my big bike skills.
My RS50 was a Japanese market bike. It was never imported to the U.S. It had a single sided swing arm, a 19mm carb and a new Arrow pipe. It came with 16 inch front so I couldn't run on slicks without finding a donor rim from a 2000 or newer RS50.
Although the bike looked really nice it wasn't fast enough to compete. It also handled like a pig. The suspension was way too soft to race with. Since the bike was never imported to the U.S. I had a hard time finding hop up parts to make it go faster.
Since I rely on Team Calamari for all my racing needs and TCR was supporting the Derbi I really couldn't get parts from them. The closest place was Texas with a company called AF1 Racing. So after owning it for 2 weeks and racing it in one race I decided to sell the bike.
The guy I sold RS50 to told me that a Team Calamari Racer was thinking of retiring and offered to sell him his Derbi GPR. I knew who he was talking about and sent the guy an e-mail. A week later I brought home a Team Calamari prepped Derbi GPR50.
My Aprilia changed hands several times during the 2004 season. It was campaigned by a fellow racer for a while. The guy I sold it to worked out the handeling problems but he ended up upgrading to a 2001 Aprilia RS50. |
