After two seasons with BMW, Garrett Gerloff's (Kawasaki WorldSBK Team) 2025 season has seen the American don Kawasaki green for the first time in his career. The pace he showed in the latter half of the 2024 campaign was impressive; however, he has struggled to find his footing atop the Kawasaki Ninja ZX-10R so far in 2025, although things seemed to have taken a step forward over the last couple of rounds, including a first top-ten of the season at Most. On Day 1 at Misano, the #31 was tenth again but he was P15 on Day 2. 

One of Gerloff’s biggest struggles so far in 2025 has been his and his bike’s ability to land consistent Tissot Superpole results. A poor Superpole means riders have to spend their race fighting up the grid and losing time in the big picture. Gerloff last season finished with an average Superpole result of P9, and this season, his average position is P15. With a couple of hours remaining in the session on Day 2, Gerloff was inside the top ten again but as riders used the SCQ tyre for a time attack, the Texan was unable to make the big step other riders did on the soft tyre.

On his Day 2 struggles, Gerloff said: “We had good race pace most of the day, we did most of the day with race tyres and I didn’t feel too bad, but I just feel like we’re behind. We need to find some pace when we come back here in a few weeks because right now we’re off. Right now, I’m barely any faster with the Q tyre than with any of the race tyres. I’m not sure what the issue is, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m doing something wrong. We’ll keep working on it, we have the data, so maybe they’ll be able to find something, but I’m just frustrated, we need it to be better.”

The field on Day 2 at Misano was incredibly close behind Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) in first and second. Between Axel Bassani (bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team) in third and Ryan Vickers (Motocorsa Racing) in 16^th, there was just over a second, with Gerloff seven tenths back from Bassani. If Gerloff was able to find a couple of tenths, he’d have moved into P12, while a fourth-tenth gain would move him into P9. There was scope to improve his time, too, with the ideal lap time showing he had completed Sector 2 0.172s quicker than his fastest lap, and Sector 3 +0.117s quicker; if he put it all together on one lap, his ideal time was a 1’33.221s.

Gerloff was also quicker than his 2024 Superpole time from the round, when he was on the M 1000 RR. He set a 1’33.634s last year, while it was a 1’33.510s in the test. In terms of long runs, Gerloff didn’t complete a full race distance run on Day 2, but he did rack up the laps in FP3 with a series of short runs, with his times for the most part in the 1’34s bracket, showing some consistency even without outright pace.

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