GRT Yamaha’s Gerloff Goes Quickest on Friday at Magny-Cours

02-10-2020

GRT Yamaha’s Gerloff Goes Quickest on Friday at Magny-Cours

The penultimate round of the 2020 FIM Superbike World Championship began on Friday at Magny-Cours in wet conditions, which are expected to continue across the weekend, with GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Junior Team’s Garrett Gerloff soaring to the fastest lap on combined times.

In the morning, the two GRT Yamaha rookies took advantage of FP1 to build their confidence with the track and the wet conditions, as Gerloff went 11th quickest in his first ever session at the French circuit, ahead of Federico Caricasulo in 13th having shown promising pace prior to a fall.

In the afternoon session though, Gerloff picked up his pace and went fastest overall, with a massive improvement of almost four seconds in comparison to the morning. Caricasulo also improved his lap time by more than a second, but struggled to find the right set-up and feeling, finishing 16th.

Ten Kate Yamaha WorldSBK Supported Team’s Loris Baz was impressive again in the wet conditions and went second in the opening FP1 session. In FP2, the French rider improved his time again and clocked the fourth fastest time of the day.

Saturday’s schedule begins with FP3, which will take place at 09:00 (GMT+2), before the Superpole at 11:00 and Race 1 at 14:00.

For Friday's combined times, click here.

Garrett Gerloff: P1 – 1'48.830

GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Junior Team

What can I say, it was super exciting to end the day as the fastest overall. That’s something I had not done yet, so that’s a great feeling for me. During FP1, I was just doing my best to learn the track, since I have never raced here before, and with the pouring rain I was just trying to feel what the grip was like and which lines to take. It was still a decent session because we made progress with the Yamaha R1’s setup. In the afternoon we made some more very solid changes, and we tried the new softer Pirelli rain tyre, which I really liked. It is nice to finish first, and I am really happy to do it for the GRT Yamaha team. It seems that tomorrow the rain will be back, we just don’t know when, and this will affect the whole day. I am feeling positive, in the rain we have a very good bike, and we are confident we can have a chance to fight with the leaders. We’ll see how it goes.

Federico Caricasulo: P16 - 1'52.388

GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Junior Team

It was quite a difficult day. We got off to a good start this morning, but then a crash compromised our FP1, as we weren’t able to get back on track for the last run, whereas everyone else could. In the afternoon we tried to improve the bike, but we got the opposite result, and I struggled throughout the session to find the right pace and feeling. For the last run we went back to the previous setup and I improved, but not enough to be among the best. Tomorrow, if it rains, we'll have a more clear-cut path to follow, whereas if it's dry, we'll have to see what happens.