The chief designer of the Aprilia racing division, Jan Witteveen, made some comparative calculations between the cornering performance obtained in the MotoGP from the 500 and 250cc bikes and he found that the latter managed to get less travel time than the bikes of the premier class thanks to the greater speed allowed by their chassis.

Therefore, he thought that if a 250 had a more powerful engine available to recover the disadvantage in acceleration and top speed along the straights, he would also have had the opportunity to compete against the bikes of the upper class.

This last evolution had an inclined aluminum double beam frame, a 42 mm upside-down Öhlins fork and APS progressive system with an Öhlins shock absorber on a carbon swingarm, in which both suspensions were fully adjustable.

The bike had a power of about 140 horsepower at 11,500 rpm, compared to the 200 hp of the 4 cylinders; the last models produced were equipped with an injector for indirect injection.

[6] In the 7 years of the RSW-2 500 project, the bike managed to gain 5 podiums and 2 fastest laps, the last of which came in the 2000 British motorcycle Grand Prix.