Milwaukee Aprilia’s Eugene Laverty has hit a setup brick wall already at the Qatar WorldSBK round and is mystifed over his RSV4’s non-reaction to a myriad of changes made.

The Irishman and his team, led by Phil Marron, have been trying to improve braking and rear grip but the factory Aprilia is not getting any better or worse with any of the alterations, and Laverty says he is on the limit trying to keep near the top six.

“I’m really having to ride on the limit to keep near the top six, which is never a nice feeling. We’ve hit the brick wall already and can’t improve. We’re trying to improve the deceleration of the bike and get it to stop more but we can’t, so it’s disappointing, and we don’t have the grip so it’s not much fun,” said Laverty, speaking at the track.

“It looks like rear grip is bad for everyone. The delay made a big difference to the track conditions, it was quite slippery which made things worse for us but the important thing is we got into SP2 so we have to work on our problems and focus on our job.

“We’ve worked well, done what we could but the bike isn’t reacting in the way we hoped. The bike isn’t reacting at all, it’s not getting better or worse, it’s staying the same, and we don’t know what to do.”