Rennie Scaysbrook | May 29, 2023
Texan Garrett Gerloff is fully ensconced in the WorldSBK Championship these days and loving the European life. We recently caught up with him for a chat.
The smile has returned to Garrett Gerloff’s face after a couple of tough years on the Yamaha.
Photos by Brad Schwartzrock and Gold & Goose
Garrett Gerloff is a man with a glow. The ever-smiling 27-year-old is now in his fourth season in WorldSBK and his first professional year on anything other than a Yamaha since his early teens. He radiates the kind of satisfaction that comes from a life meticulously planned and executed, one that comes from hard work and sacrifice that only the people with true drive can experience.
Once a stalwart of the MotoAmerica paddock, Gerloff is now (almost) a fully-fledged European living in the European racing capital of Andorra, fluent in Spanish, Catalan, and with enough comprehension to get by in Italian. And he’s learning German, but only knows “all the bad words,” thanks to his German colleagues in his BMW team.
“I’m somebody that likes to experience new cultures and meet new people,” Gerloff says. “I’ve learned so much about the world and really got to see from the inside different people. It’s been cool.”
Gerloff knew his would be a path away from the comforts of his Texan home, and organized his life to make the best possible use of a shot that only comes once—twice if you’re really lucky—in your life, and his story is one any aspiring racer should take note of.
Gerloff says the BMW is miles apart from the Yamaha.
“I don’t really have too many ties here,” he says. “I knew in 2017 I wanted to race in the World Championship, so I started saving as much money as I could that year. I knew that if I was going to have an opportunity to go to the World Championship, it wasn’t going to pay anything. I knew it was going to be kind of a shit deal, but a good opportunity. That’s how it was going to be set up. So, I just started trying to set up my life around that possible opportunity. Then I kind of forced it.
“In 2019, I was pretty vocal about wanting to go to World Superbike. It was the easiest connection to make because [Gerloff was on the factory Yamaha team in MotoAmerica] it was Yamaha-to-Yamaha. I ended up going to Magny-Cours in France to plead my case. I didn’t really think anything was going to come of it, but then I came back home with a contract signed!
“I definitely forced the issue but I’m glad I did. I’m glad I took the chance and I’m glad I set my life up to be able to do it, so I wasn’t locked down with a bunch of responsibilities here. I just knew what I wanted to do.”
His Andorran base has him deep in the heart of where the fastest riders in the world call home during the season. Jack Miller, Jorge Martin, Aleix and Pol Espargaro, Alex Rins, Brad and Darryn Binder are all neighbors, making training competitive but also a great place to make the all-important racing connections.
A debut podium in Catalunya in 2020 showed the world the speed Gerloff has when all the pieces gel correctly.
“Andorra has a great sports residency program for the riders,” Gerloff says. “It’s a beautiful place to live, for sure. They didn’t really need to convince me. It’s nice, too, that it’s almost like mid-Europe to where you can get to Spain and Portugal and also France and Germany and Italy all easily. It’s in the middle. So, it made sense as far as that went, although it’d be nice if I had a few visitors from home! I’ve been giving my friends and family hell that they never come and visit.”
Gerloff has good reason to want a few visitors as he’s got a brand new, very different bike and team and is part of the global BMW motorsport family. Part of a four-rider attack with factory riders Scott Redding and the injured Michael van Der Mark, and his teammate in the Bonovo Action BMW team, former MotoAmerica rider, Loris Baz, Gerloff is rediscovering the joy a cohesive team environment can bring even if the results are still not where he’d like or expect them to be.
“I’m just having a lot of fun,” he says. “The bike is really fun to ride. It’s one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed myself so much. Even though we’re still struggling with stuff, and we haven’t had the best results, just getting on the bike and firing it up and everything and the speed it has, the power it has, it’s really fun to ride.”
The latter years with the Yamaha GRT team were trying, to say the least.
The BMW is by far the most tech-laden bike on the WorldSBK grid and this is one of the things he’s had to get used to compared to the near analog feeling of the crossplane crank Yamaha he spent the first three WorldSBK years on.
“It’s not just the firing order, but the amount of power the BMW has to begin with is super high,” Gerloff says. “The technology on the bike is really impressive with all the different things that they have we can work with, what we can adjust.
“But it can be positive and negative because there’s a lot of things we can change if we’re having issues, but at the same time there’s a lot of places that you can go to get distracted, basically, and not have the same feeling.
“The motor’s got a decent amount of torque to work with. It doesn’t feel flat on the bottom, and it’s got so much power throughout the whole rev range. BMW is trying to set up the electronics and stuff to control it all without having too much intervention. It’s for sure a fine line.
Catalunya 2023 was a turning point for Gerloff and the Bonovo team with his best result of the year to date.
“It hasn’t been the easiest, but also, I’d say probably the weirdest complaint I have with the bike is it’s almost like the electronics are too refined in a way, to where there’s like a big layer of insulation between my ass, the rear tire, and the throttle. But that’s such a hard complaint to bring to the electronic engineers. I honestly don’t know the answer. What do we need to do? We don’t need to make it worse, but there’s got to be something we can do. At the minute, it’s like promoting bad behavior, if you know what I’m saying.
“The bike does actually control a decent amount about spin, but it’s almost like until the bike is really spinning, and I’m about to toss myself, that’s when I know that I’m spinning. Until that point, there’s not a whole lot of feedback to let me know I’m already spinning a lot.
“We even tried audible feedback, where the team can add some TC noises, basically. We’ve tried stuff like that, but it’s [the problem] not an audible thing. I need feedback through my ass, basically. I think it might be letting us in on another problem chassis-related, potentially. Anyway, it’s a hard thing. What are we supposed to do with that info, really? I’m not saying that’s the only thing that needs to be updated or changed or anything like that, but it’s one of the things that really stands out to me.”
A sweetener in the BMW deal was a reunion between Gerloff and his old crew chief Les Pearson.
Gerloff has the might of BMW behind him, even if he’s not in the factory team. And he knows the German giant really, really, really, wants to win. The Munich men and women have never won the WorldSBK title, despite having riders like Troy Corser, Leon Haslam, Marco Melandri, Tom Sykes, Chaz Davies, Redding, van Der Mark, Baz and others, all previous race and world title winners.
“They’re a really good group of guys in the team,” says Gerloff. “Also, the engineers that I’m working with in BMW, they have such a good vibe and the atmosphere is really good. Everybody is super passionate, they want to win badly, and they’re not winning, so they’re giving everything to everybody. They’re trying to put as many pieces out on the board to see who can move up. So, that’s been really nice. There’s also the expectation of the [Bonovo] team, there’s no expectation to win, basically, which I haven’t really had because when I was here racing in the U.S. and stuff, I always had that pressure to win because it was a top team.”
Perhaps his spectacular rookie season in 2020 was a false dawn?
“I had some good results, for sure,” he says. “I was on the podium the first year, which was awesome. I couldn’t have done it without that team and my crew chief. Then it got to a place where even though I wasn’t getting all the same support and stuff, the team was expecting the same results. It just got a bit frustrating, in a way, and difficult for sure.
“So, now I’m relaxed. I can see that BMW really appreciates having me and that’s just awesome to feel.”
A test in Catalunya before Assen didn’t yield the kind of results he was hoping but, there was some hope.
“During the Catalunya test we tried the opposite direction to what we normally would, and I was like, ‘Man, that feels way better.’ We basically were going one direction with the front and triple clamps and a couple other areas and it wasn’t bad, but we started going the opposite way and it just felt a lot more natural. I was getting more feedback. The way the bike was turning in and turning mid-corner and exit improved a lot.”
Life in Andorra can be a bit on the cold side.
The result when the series returned to Catalunya for the race proper? Gerloff had his best weekend of the season, posting credible 9-7-10 results behind the Alvaro Bautista steamroller in a season where you’ve got to be on the ragged edge to even crack the top 10.
“That’s the thing, every time we’ve gone to a track this year, the pace I was doing last year and that everybody was doing last year is not good enough,” he says. “You have to do another half second or three-quarters second to even be close to the front.
“At Phillip Island, I qualified sixth last year with a 1:30.7. I qualified 16th this year going four-tenths faster! That was my best-ever time at Phillip Island, going four-tenths faster than last year, and I dropped 10 places.
“But I’m really enjoying life at BMW, with this team, and living in Europe. I wouldn’t change that for anything.”
Have you watched his YouTube videos?
https://www.youtube.com/@GarrettGerloff31
Gerloff has made a bit of a name for not just his on-track exploits but in front of the camera. His YouTube videos, produced by Andorran flatmate Brad Schwartzrock, have been a resounding success, showing his life in WorldSBK and giving fans access to areas they’d never see.
“YouTube is a weird world because when it started off the amount of reach and the amount of traffic that we got initially was insane. I was like, “This is easy, man,” Gerloff says.
“Lately it’s been kind of tough to get views and whatnot. Even when I was over doing autographs at the Alpinestars truck [at COTA], half the people that were there had been watching the YouTube channel. It was super cool to hear them say that. They seemed excited about it. So, it’s nice to see that there’s actually a connection that’s kind of developing. I have a lot of fun doing it. I tried to set it up to where I don’t have to focus on it whatsoever. So, I have Brad who’s doing the video filming and everything.
“I just want to use it as a way to give more exposure to myself, but also the people that support me and for them to see their name out there more. Also, I kind of want it to be like a project of awareness for road racing and World Superbike. That’s what Jonathan Rea has been doing for a while, and his videos are really good. Scott Redding has also dabbled in it. Maybe I can do something. My life feels like it’s all over the place and interesting I guess, in a way. So hopefully the people out there like it and it’s giving me a new platform for promotion.” CN
