GERLOFF Garrett Gerloff, on the Kawasaki, gave himself a huge amount of work to do by qualifying in sixteenth and as is so often the case, a start from the sixth row of the grid condemns a rider to some exciting but ultimately fruitless midfield battles. Such was the case for Gerloff who had his worst weekend since his scoreless outing in Assen back in April. This gave him tenth in the championship, notably ahead of all the BMW, Yamaha and Honda riders. Of the non-Ducati riders, only Lowes and Bassani on the Kawa-powered Bimota’ s bettered his season finish and some measure of Gerloff’ s resolve came from being awarded the‘ Best Finisher’ trophy, presented to the rider who had made the greatest overall improvement from his starting positions throughout the season.
PETRUCCI’ S LAST DANCE / OLIVIERA In the BMW camp, it seemed almost certain that we were seeing Danilo Petrucci’ s final weekend in WorldSBK. The move to BMW has not worked out well for the likeable Petrux and in retrospect staying at Barni Spark would have likely seen him be much more competitive as he never adjusted to the M1000RR and was honest in his self-appraisal of this. Oliveira, coming from thirteenth on the grid and looking strong in the early stages of races faded towards the end, had a tech DNF in the Sprint Race and only came away with points from Race Two. Petrux ended his WorldSBK season scoreless, a sad way to end for the fan favourite’ s time in the series.
DIXON / CHANTRA Jake Dixon had posted some impressive results on the HRC Honda in the previous two rounds but wasn’ t able to repeat at Jerez, although he did outscore all the Yamahas so there were some positives for the team. Somkiat Chantra, whilst never featuring
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