Garrett Gerloff (Kawasaki WorldSBK Team) ended the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship visit to MotorLand Aragon with a top six finish, but the Kawasaki rider was left to rue a Tissot Superpole session where he set the 12th-fastest time, as well as poor starts, which left him unable to show his potential during the first two races of the Aragon Round. However, he was able to respond on Sunday in Race 2.
Gerloff’s weekend got off to a poorer start than he would have liked thanks to his Superpole effort, where the #31 posted a 1’48.216s, good enough for P12 on the timesheets. However, he made up one place for the Race 1 grid when Alberto Surra (Motocorsa Racing) received a back of the grid start penalty for a yellow flag infringement and Gerloff soon battled his way to a P9 finish in Race 1 as he continued his run of top ten finishes.
Sadly for the Texan, that run came to an end in the Superpole Race. This time, he started from P12, and that is where he finished the race. He dropped down to P16 on Lap 1 and eventually battled his way forward, while also taking advantage of some misfortune ahead as he finished where he started. It was Race 2 where Gerloff really shone, going from P13 on the grid – with riders who had been in the top nine after Superpole dropping down the order in the Superpole Race, Gerloff was a rider who lost out in terms of starting position.
A good start immediately propelled him into the top ten and he remained there for the first eight laps of the race, before starting his charge. He moved up a place when he got ahead of Michael van der Mark (ROKiT BMW Motorrad WorldSBK Team) on Lap 9, and a lap later he had passed Tommy Bridewell (Superbike Advocates). Surra quickly followed before a late-race fight with Alvaro Bautista (Barni Spark Racing Team), with Gerloff eventually passing the two-time WorldSBK Champion at Turn 1 on Lap 14 to take sixth place. It means the American has taken seven top ten finishes in the last eight races, only missing out in the Superpole Race at Aragon.
Reflecting on his P6 finish in Race 2, Gerloff said: “Race 2 was good, it was just nice to have a decent start and be able to feel like I had the bike underneath me to go forward and make passes. It’s so tough, everybody goes so fast. If you have a bad Superpole, unless you can pass four guys on the first lap, it’s like your weekend is finished. It’s tough to accept that I had good pace all weekend, but I couldn’t really show it just because I had such a bad starting position. It’s not an unfamiliar story; it’s difficult for me to qualify sometimes. It was nice that I could see Axel and Alex in front of me. A top six is good, last year that was unbelievable. I’m just happy to be in the top six and it’s nice to end the weekend with a good race.”
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