Garrett Gerloff and his Kawasaki WorldSBK Team enjoyed warm and dry conditions to work with on the opening day of track action at the penultimate FIM Superbike World Championship round, with Garrett just missing out on a top ten placing in the combined practice times.
The Circuito Estoril was the venue for two Free Practice sessions on the opening day of action at the classic 4.182km-long venue in Portugal. Garrett had a fall in FP1 but both team and rider recovered well in FP2 to finish in overall 11th position.
Gerloff’s lap time from FP1 was beaten by his FP2 best and he now looks forward to finding even more set-up improvements to his Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10RR during FP3 on Saturday 10 October, before making a time attack during Superpole Qualifying.
After Superpole, the first race of the weekend, over 21 laps, will take place at 15.30 local time in Portugal. Sunday 11 October will then feature a ten-lap ‘sprint’ race, before a 21-lap Race Two rounds out the action at Estoril.
Garrett Gerloff
“Friday was a bit of a challenging day. It felt a bit off this morning in FP1, for some reason, and then I ended up going down, which was unfortunate. There was a bit of a tyre misunderstanding, but I am not sure how much that played into it. I am happy that I was OK and the bike was OK. The team did an amazing job in fixing the bike for FP2. It felt better then but everybody is going fast and it feels like I am just a little bit off. It is super-close and if I find two or three tenths then I would move up quite a few positions. I am going to have to work with the boys overnight and see if we can find something in the data to make the bike set-up better and come back tomorrow to fight for good positions.”
