Garrett Gerloff (Kawasaki WorldSBK Team) lined up for the opening race of the WorldSBK weekend at Misano World Circuit Marco Simoncelli on the fifth row of the grid, then rode to a 14th place finish.
In hot and humid conditions at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ on Saturday 14 June, Garrett was seventh in the morning FP3 session. He placed 15th in the subsequent Superpole Qualifying session, after the bright and sunny weather conditions had significantly raised the ambient and track temperatures.
In the 21-lap WorldSBK race Gerloff made some early progress on his Ninja ZX-10RR in lap one, until another rider made contact with his bike and Gerloff lost a lot of time removing damaged components from his left handlebar.
At the end of lap one Garrett was last across the start/finish line, but made determined progress from then on. He made overtakes around the 4.226km Misano layout and moved up to finish the opening Misano race in 14th place.
Sunday 15 June will be the final day of action at Misano, with the ten-lap Superpole Race and a final full distance WorldSBK Race Two bringing the sixth round of the championship to a close.
Garrett Gerloff
“In the morning’s FP3 session I felt pretty good. We used a Q tyre and I think a lot of other people used one also. I was in seventh place, which I was pretty happy about. It definitely got a lot hotter over the next two hours as we went towards Superpole Qualifying. Then, I was fighting like crazy just to do the same time that I did in FP3 and it seemed like everybody else found half a second. I was just getting frustrated because it seems like each time I think I have found something, I am behind again. I had a decent start to first lap in the race when I some overtakes. Into T8 on the first lap I had a rider ram into me. Their exhaust bent my clutch lever down onto my rear brake, so I had to break off the clutch lever and try to get it off the cable. I wasted eight seconds or so trying to do that. After that I was just in the back trying to make progress forward. I did the best that I could but it is not the result that we want, obviously. But, we got a couple of points.”
