Aprilia has played down rumours that 250cc world champion Marco Simoncelli will ride a third RSV-4 in the opening rounds of the 2009 World Superbike Championship.

Simoncelli has been linked to a WSBK outing since he took up his ‘prize', a test with the team alongside Shinya Nakano and Alex Hofmann, as a result of winning the 2008 250cc world championship with Gilera, a sister brand of Aprilia.

Proving just a second slower than MotoGP veteran Nakano, both of whom were experiencing the bike for the first time, 21-year-old Simoncelli's performance was thought to have put him in with a chance of an outing in Australia and Qatar with Nakano and Max Biaggi.

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