Edwards, Haga to leave Aprilia.

Aprilia have officially announced that riders' Colin Edwards and Noriyuki Haga will both leave the team after this Sunday's season ending Valencia Grand Prix.

Despite Edwards making an impressive start to the year with sixth at Suzuka, that remains his best result to date and the team have struggled to improve the chatter and weight problems on the RS Cube ever since. Meanwhile, the expected demise of title sponsor Alice for 2004 has done little to help their future plans.

Such issues, plus a string of technical failures - and being set on fire at the Sachsenring - strained relations between Edwards and Aprilia futher.

As a result, the Texan has long been linked with a return to Honda, alongside Sete Gibernau in the Telefonica team. This now seems almost certain and Aprilia would well lose Michelin support as well.

By contrast to Edwards' bright future, Haga could be making his last MotoGP start this Sunday - the Samurai of Slide having looked a shadow of his former WSBK self this season. The fans' favourite has been linked with a move back to SBK, either in national or international competition.

"We are saying goodbye to Colin and Nori this weekend," confirmed Aprilia project leader Gigi Dall'Igna. "We wish them our best for the future, and will immediately start work for the 2004 season. In fact we are going to test (at Valencia) after the GP with Marcellino Lucchi.

"We will test the new engine soon, but in the meantime we are working on the chassis," he added. "In all we have a new chassis, new swingarm and different solutions to test. This work will allow us to create the best bike for next season. Now we are ready to end the season with a good result, but are also excited about the tests."

Aprilia gave no indication of their 2004 rider line-up, although Olivier Jacque and Jeremy McWilliams have been linked with the team.