Friday saw the second and final day of the MOTUL FIM Superbike World Championship’s test at Cremona, Italy. Among several standout performances was that of Bonovo Action BMW’s Garrett Gerloff, who finished the combined standings on Friday in a highly respectable seventh place.
Friday morning saw Gerloff push for a best time of 1’30.459s, a result that left him in twelfth place heading into the break. In the afternoon, however, Gerloff found over a second of extra pace, pushing his time to an impressive 1’29.325s. This leapfrogged Gerloff five places in the combined standings, ultimately finishing in seventh place by the end of Friday’s test, racking up 59 completed laps in the process.
Discussing what the team can take forward from the test, Gerloff said: “I really like the track; it’s got a cool flow to it. I didn’t feel bad at all. We’re just doing circles a little bit. It’s been confusing why something that should work doesn’t, and why something that probably shouldn’t work does. I don’t know what, this year, has been going on. We’re making progress. It’s just we expect to be higher than we are. We’re doing our best to regain everything we need to get back to where we should be. We went back to a setup that we used at the beginning of the year that worked really well at Jerez but didn’t work at all at Portimao or in Australia; that was pretty terrifying, I thought it was me! We went back to it and at this track it feels good. We used it all day today. We’ve been scratching our heads a bit, but I feel good here so that’s a positive.”
After showing strong pace, Gerloff was asked if this track suited the natural strengths of the M 1000 RR. Teammate Scott Redding also displayed progression and improvement over the course of the two day test, improving from 1’30.389 to 1’29.215 by the end of the afternoon.
Discussing this, Gerloff stated: “I don’t know, it really depends on how the next few rounds go and what we learn from that and what we show up with here. We might show up with the same setup or something completely different. As far as it goes about whether it’s a BMW track, I think it could be. At least for Toprak for sure, he can ride anything! It’s a stop and go track, at least in the beginning and the first sector, so I think that’ll suit him pretty well. I don’t feel bad, we just need to keep making improvements because I know we can be faster than we are.”
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Source: WorldSBK.com