“Best Friday I’ve had” for Garrett Gerloff at UK WorldSBK

Fifth place in FP2 at the UK WorldSBK was Garrett Gerloff’s best session result of the 2025 season; indeed, the American called the day his “best Friday” so far.

Gerloff scored the best result of the season at the last round at Misano, and has an affinity with Donington, which is also a track that has suited Kawasaki in the past, having taken 14 wins since 2012 with Tom Sykes (nine wins) and Jonathan Rea (five).

“It’s the best Friday I’ve had,” Garrett Gerloff said.

“I haven’t seen too many one-digit numbers next to my name, so that’s always good.

“The bike feels good here. I like this track, and so that helps. But I also really like Portimao and that was a pretty shit weekend for us.

“I think we’re just getting into a better window with the bike, so we were able to start from a better spot with everything and then it paid off today.”

Although Friday was positive in general, Gerloff was clear about where he was struggling compared to his rivals.

“You can see in the sector times,” he said. “Sector one and sector two I’m not great, but then sector three and sector four I’m at the top, or close to it.

“But that’s what I’ve been feeling with this bike: it’s so good in really hard braking, to first gear, stop, and then go again. It works really well there.

“But I’ve been struggling all year with corner speed. The first two sectors are all corner speed. It’s a corner speed section and I’m outside the top-10 in those sectors.”

“Satisfaction” from speed versus Bimota

Gerloff’s fifth place on Friday afternoon meant he beat both Bimota riders, with Alex Lowes in sixth and Axel Bassani down in 16th.

The Kawasaki rider said there is “satisfaction” to be taken from this, given the KB998 was introduced this year to replace the ZX-10RR in World Superbike.

“For sure it gives you some satisfaction,” Gerloff said.

“It’s a completely different bike, but at least it’s the same electronics, same engine, so it’s something I can take away from the weekend.

“It’s hard to do a lot of comparison from last year because it was 45 degrees for track temperature today, where last year in all the races, all the sessions, it never got above 25 degrees. So, you can’t compare that.

“So, it’s been tough. A lot of times I’m having to go off my own data, because the Bimota data looks so different than mine for the corner speed that they can have and stuff.

“So, just trying to do my best. But it’s nice.”