The FIM Superbike World Championship has kicked off with the first free practice sessions of the year at MotorLand Aragón. The GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team returned to action with Garrett Gerloff and Kohta Nozane, making progress throughout the day, finishing fourth and 18th respectively on combined times.
In Free Practice 1, Gerloff ended the session sixth fastest on a 1’50.269, while Nozane managed 17th with a 1’51.622. Both worked on race pace, completing longer runs, as they also found a solid base set-up heading into the rest of the weekend.
The riders both improved their times in the afternoon free practice session, taking good steps forward with the Yamaha R1 WorldSBK. The Japanese rider’s best lap, a 1’51.118, saw him end FP2 in 15th position, while his American teammate ran an impressive 1’49.900 to go fourth fastest overall.
The GYTR GRT Yamaha WorldSBK Team will be back on track tomorrow, with the first race of the 2022 season set for 14:00 (CET). Before that will come the Superpole qualifying session at 11:00, after FP3 at 09:00.
“I’m feeling confident, even though some of the guys look to have really strong race pace. Anyway, we did a good job, and in the morning I went out with just one set of tyres to do a long run, as we needed to see the performance. In FP2, I got a feel of the track in hotter conditions for the first time properly this year. I feel Yamaha has done a really good job and we have a great package overall. I just want to have a good qualifying and to keep building from there.”
“Today was not an easy one. Conditions were different and it was a bit tough for me to get a good feeling with the track. We need to check what happened, but we’ll push hard to overcome the problems. Anyway, we made some improvements from morning to afternoon, so I’m confident we can make another step forward tomorrow. Let’s see what happens and I’ll do my best in the qualifying session and Race 1 to get a good result.”
