Garrett Gerloff (Kawasaki WorldSBK Team) ended his opening day of practice at the Misano World Circuit ‘Marco Simoncelli’ in 16th place, in what were hot air and track conditions.
The Misano circuit, near the Adriatic coast of Italy, was the site of a mid-season test session, towards the end of May. On the opening day of competitive WorldSBK track action, at the seventh round of the WorldSBK Championship, Gerloff could not replicate the strong pace he showed in testing on his Ninja ZX-10RR.
As the track conditions started to change between FP1 and FP2 today, almost every rider went faster. Gerloff was one of only two who could not find an increase in pace as track temperatures began to rise to almost 50°C, as the track surface itself started to bed in.
Gerloff’s afternoon pace of 1’33.657 was only marginally slower than his FP1 time of 1’33.640, but it left him in 16th place overall at the end of the opening day.
Saturday 13 June will feature an FP3 session, Superpole Qualifying and a 21-lap Race One. A ten-lap Tissot Superpole Race and a final full-distance race will end the track action at Misano, on Sunday 14 June.
Garrett Gerloff
“I am a little bit off the times I set at the recent Misano tests and I don’t know why, which is frustrating. The only thing I can think of is that the track felt a little dirty this morning, and I was similar to Alex and Axel from BbKRT. Then this afternoon everybody made a jump and I am just stuck in the same place. It is frustrating, especially after having a good Aragon race weekend, more or less, when we ended it well. I feel like I am doing everything the same but I am getting a different result. I am trying to understand why. I do not want to be like this, I want to be consistently nearer the front. Now I need to go over the data with my guys, then we can make a decision.”
