Garrett Gerloff (Kawasaki WorldSBK Team) made not one but two race starts at Magny-Cours, as the first race of the weekend in France was red-flagged and restarted over a reduced 12 laps. Garrett took his Ninja ZX-10RR to ninth place, earning valuable championship points.
The real racing season restarted on Saturday afternoon, September 5, at Magny-Cours, with Gerloff having qualified in 12th position in the morning’s Superpole session. He would have started further up the grid, but he lost his best single Superpole lap time to a yellow flag incident, which saw his best lap of the session dropped from the official pre-race rankings.
Garrett got a great start in the eventually red-flagged opener, and was quickly up to sixth place on his Ninja ZX-10RR. When the race was stopped, he was in eighth place, and that was the grid position he would start from in the only Saturday race that counted in terms of official results.
With a shorter race to now compete in – for full championship points despite being run over 12 laps – Garrett and his team opted for a set-up change, but it proved to be less than ideal, and the American rider had to work hard to take ninth place and the seven championship points that went with it.
The ten-lap Superpole Race and a full-length Race Two will finish off the ninth round, on Sunday, 6 September.
