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Imagine you really love your job and it's pretty much the only thing you've ever done. Now imagine that you'd be in danger of losing that job if you did it 2% worse than the one person in the world who does it best.
Feeling a little stressed?
Garrett Gerloff is the only U.S. rider currently competing in the premier class of a world championship motorcycle roadracing series. After winning two Supersport championships and several Superbike races in MotoAmerica on Yamahas, Gerloff moved to the Superbike World Championship in 2020, racing for the GRT Yamaha team. In three years, he achieved six podium finishes but never quite got a WSBK win. In 2023, he switched to the Bonovo Action BMW team, but hasn't made the podium. Then Bonovo announced it was pulling out of WSBK after the 2024 season, leaving Gerloff looking for a new ride.
While racers all put out a steady flow of social media content these days, I think the videos that Gerloff and his team have been posting on his YouTube channel are particularly interesting. There's no attempt to put a positive spin on everything, to make the world look like all happiness and roses. In the video below recapping the British and Czech rounds, for example, Gerloff openly talks about the stress of needing results to ensure he still has a place in WSBK next year. That 2% difference I mentioned? Actually, Gerloff is almost never 2% off the fastest lap time in any outing. But if a rider is that much off the pace, it means the difference between being on pole and being near the back of the field. And that can mean the difference between being part of a world championship and going home to think about some other way you might be able to make a living.
Looking to the future
Today, Gerloff and Kawasaki Puccetti Racing announced a deal for 2025 as a one-bike, one-rider team. That could make for an unusual and not necessarily advantageous situation for Gerloff as he will apparently be riding the only Kawasaki ZX-10RR on the grid. For 2025, the factory Kawasaki Racing Team will become the Bimota by Kawasaki Racing Team, fielding a race bike with a Bimota chassis and a ZX-10RR engine. While the Puccetti team is familiar with the Kawasaki, Gerloff won't have a teammate or even another Kawasaki rider in the field to compare data with. And the team will be racing essentially the same motorcycle as this year. Puccetti's current rider, Tito Rabat, is 22nd in the standings. Gerloff is currently tied for 12th.
With the odds of Moto2 rider Joe Roberts getting a MotoGP seat for 2025 apparently declining, Gerloff is likely to remain the only U.S. rider in the premier class of a roadracing world championship. But as his videos show, staying at the top level is no easy task, and it's not going to get any easier.
