INTERVIEW I BONOVO ACTION BMW'S GARRETT GERLOFF
P90
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 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.
A debut podium in
Catalunya in 2020
showed the world the
speed Gerloff has
when all the pieces
gel correctly.
