Gerloff shows glimpses of former self in San Juan, claims three top tens
A disappointing 2021 WorldSBK season for American rider Garrett Gerloff has finally shown signs of turning around following three top ten finishes at San Juan.
The American rider started the season with a great deal of pace and potential, however, an erratic few races saw him have incidents with Toprak Razgatlioglu, Jonathan Rea and Michael Rinaldi.
The last of those was at Assen which seemed to dent Gerloff’s confidence and leave him shy of making hard overtakes.
And while the pace remained there over one lap, Gerloff struggled to make any progress in the races.
However, an impressive showing last weekend in San Juan saw Gerloff claim three top ten finishes and fight for the top six, despite losing time in the early part of both feature races.
While two seventh places and an eighth might not sound like a huge improvement, Gerloff was back making decisive overtakes on the likes of Andrea Locatelli and Michael Rinaldi - riders who have consistently been ahead of the GRT Yamaha rider in recent rounds.
Speaking after race two, Gerloff added: "It was nice to start the day with a very good pace and the Yamaha R1 felt great.
"Unfortunately, I had a really difficult time at the beginning of both races, which prevented us from getting much better results.
"I was able to make progress, but not as much as I would have wanted.
"It’s frustrating because I know our potential is way better than this, we just need to put the pieces together so we can use the pace that we have and try to move up the leaderboard."
