Garrett Gerloff (Kawasaki WorldSBK Team) continues to show a step in the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship as he has seamlessly converted his best result of the season in the final race last round to a P1 in Friday’s closing FP2.  His session-topping time comes as his first P1 since FP2 back at Aragon 2024 in the same round where he landed his most recent podium finish.

PULLING IT OUT OF A HAT: ”We made some changes at Balaton Park, I was expecting it to work here too, but I didn’t expect it to work that well”

Gerloff’s Friday got rolling in the morning’s Free Practice 1 where just minutes into the session, he found himself covered in dust after a minor lowside crash after he lost the front on the heavy-braking Turn 1. He took his bike back to the boxes where they attached a new fairing and he went on to run the remaining 12 of his 17 total FP1 laps and finished in P9. In FP2, he struck with four minutes left, landing the best time of the session of 1’30.791 to displace Nicolo Bulega (Aruba.it Racing - Ducati) from P1; who notably saw his session early boxes after the #11 crashed on the same Turn 1 as Gerloff in FP1. The first three sectors the #31 seems to have mastered, as he posted the fastest time in sector 1, top three in sectors two and three and if he can clean up his fourth sector times where he was ninth fastest in FP2, anything is possible for the American.

On his FP2 upset, Gerloff said: “Honestly who knows? For sure it won’t happen in the Race, right? But I came in and asked, ‘That was the race tyre right?’ they said it was the race tyre and I just laughed and said OK! It felt good, I’m really happy with the team and how we’re working, I feel like we found something at Balaton, and I was expecting it to work here too, but I didn’t expect it to work that well. I wasn’t consistent in practice, so I definitely need to work on consistency. I just had that one lap and then made a bunch of mistakes so I don’t want to get ahead of myself, but it’s nice to finally have a good result for the Kawasaki WorldSBK team and everybody that’s working really hard and sacrificing a lot. It’s nice to feel like its paid off a bit. On Thursday I saw them put a camera on the bike, and I was like aw man, and then of course, two laps in, it looks like it came in handy, there was a red flag, and it allowed me to do more laps than I thought I was going to be able to. We made some good changes, and at the end of the day we’re happy with what we did.”

TOP  FIVE ASPIRATIONS: “I would love to get another top five, it’s going to be tough for sure… but definitely a nice way to end Friday”

A key to the #31 has been his new crew chief for this season, Les Pearson. The two have chemistry from Gerloff’s days back with Yamaha, and reuniting this season with Kawaski correlates with an improvement in results. In 2025, he earned seven top ten finishes, just one of those within the top six, so far in 2026, he already has five finishes in the top ten, and two within the front six places.

On his expectation from the weekend from here, Gerloff was humble as usual, he said: ”I would love to get another top five, it’s going to be tough for sure, everybody’s going strong. This was a bit of a light that shone through right now, but it’ll be tough, and I have no qualms about that. There are some things I still want to improve on the bike, which is good, I’m glad that it didn’t feel perfect, so there’s still room for us to grow, but definitely a nice way to end Friday.”

Catch the Gerloff and the green machine in the three races to come at Most Live and OnDemand with the WorldSBK VideoPass! Now 30% off!