Gerloff ‘happy the season is over’, needs to find ‘aggressive balance’ for 2022

Preparations for 2022 can now begin for Garrett Gerloff who is eager to put an extremely difficult 2021 WorldSBK season behind him.

After flashing huge potential in his 2020 rookie season, Gerloff looked set to continue to build on that at the beginning of this season as he demonstrated top five pace on multiple occasions.

However, early mistakes resulted in crashes and contact with several riders, one of which was with new world champion and fellow Yamaha rider Toprak Razgatlioglu at Assen. 

As a result, Gerloff seemed to be riding much of the season void of any confidence and unwilling to take risks.

It was a similar story at last weekend’s season finale as the American qualified inside the top five and even challenged for second place heading into turn one - race one. 

But the GRT Yamaha rider was quickly shuffled back down the order before going on to finish 11th.

"I wish we would have had some dry races, that would have been nice," added Gerloff after race two. 

"But with how the conditions changed two days in a row, and also before the first race today it was a little bit frustrating, but yeah, happy that the season is over. Looking forward to next year and starting testing and everything."

2022 is set to be a big year for Gerloff if he has any intention of claiming a top ride in WorldSBK for the following season, or even putting his name back in the hat for a MotoGP seat. 

For that to happen, the American believes he needs to smoothen out his consistency and do a better job over the opening couple of laps of races. 

Gerloff said: "Just consistency. I need to improve my first couple of laps of the race for sure. 

"The bike feels good but I just need to work on some things regarding myself first and then go from there. 

"I need to be a bit more aggressive in the early part of the race but not too much. I need to find the balance."