Garrett Gerloff’s first full season as an AMA Pro racer got off to a painful start when he highsided his Y.E.S. Graves Yamaha YZF-R6 during the opening AMA Pro GoPro Daytona SportBike practice session March 15 at Daytona International Speedway. Gerloff landed hard, breaking his right femur, and the 16-year-old Texan is working hard to return to action as soon as possible. “I remember everything,” Gerloff said, when asked if he remembered his crash. “I just got dragged into Turn One too hot. I just got on that stuff outside of Turn One. I had already done it two laps before, so I knew it was slippery. The data [acquisition] on the bike showed that I only opened up the throttle 13%. I must have hit a dirt patch or something, because I barely opened the gas and it spit me off. “I was flying through the air, and I landed on my hip. I’m pretty sure me landing so hard on my hip just took my leg over and broke it. I rolled over, and my foot was next to my hip and the leg was all twisted up. I had to wait there for a minute for the ambulance to get there and get it straight. It hurt pretty good. This is the first bone I ever broke, but I knew immediately what had happened.” The session was red flagged, and an ambulance whisked Gerloff directly to nearby Halifax Medical Center, where he quickly underwent surgery to repair the leg. “They got me to the hospital,” said Gerloff, “and four hours after I got to the hospital I was in surgery. They straightened my leg, and they put a rod through my femur and put two screws by my knee and one by my hip. They said that the bone went back together perfectly and it couldn’t have gone any better. “The next morning when I woke up they had me stand up and move around. They said it was weight-bearing and I trusted them, but everything felt so weird. The first time I couldn’t do it. I almost passed out [from the pain]. They loaded me up on some more drugs, and a few hours later they came back and got me and I could do it pretty well, but I was so out of breath I had to sit back down. I was really struggling. They got me up again later, and I got a little farther. It was hard, but they said I was doing really well.” After four days in the hospital, Gerloff’s family drove him home to Spring, Texas, and since he’s been home, his recovery has been moving along well. “It got better so fast,” Gerloff told Roadracingworld.com on Monday, April 2. “Like right now, I’m walking around with one crutch and putting a good amount of weight on it. In the next day or two, I should be able to get rid of the crutch and limp around. That’s what the doctor told me, so I’ve been working on that and just trying to get strength back into my legs. Sitting around for a week really drained all the muscles, so I’m trying to get that back. And it doesn’t bend very far. Well, it didn’t. Now, it’s pretty good. It’s a little bit past 90 degrees. I’m working on trying to stretch it out and stuff like that. “They [doctors] gave me a sheet of what [physical therapy exercises] I can do, so it’s really just me. So every couple of hours I’m just trying to do all the stuff they told us and stretch it out and get it loose. I think at the end of the week I’m going to a sport therapy place, so they’ll probably push me even harder. I’m doing really well, and I think we’re going in the right direction.” Gerloff said a strong motivator through his ordeal has been the support shown by the Y.E.S. Graves Yamaha team. “The first thing I thought of when I was lying on the ground was, ‘Man, I just messed up the whole season. I hurt my leg. I let everyone down. How did this happen?’ I was really disappointed,” said Gerloff. “Then, I went through surgery. Everyone, the whole Y.E.S. Graves Yamaha team came every night to my room and watched TV with me. Everyone was talking and laughing and smiling, and they said everything was going to be OK and just to heal up fast and come back stronger. That took a lot of stress off of me. “Then Tommy [Hayden] riding for me was really cool. To know my bike was still going to be out there and Tommy was going to ride it was cool. I’m still disappointed because I know I’m going to miss Road Atlanta [which Gerloff considers his home track], but the team really has been supporting me. They have been sending me cards and Get Well baskets. I really still feel a part of the team and that they didn’t just replace me with Tommy. They are behind me 100%, and I really appreciate that from them. Now I can just focus on trying to recover.” Gerloff said he wanted to be back in action at Round Three of the series, May 4-6 at Infineon Raceway, but considering he has never been to the track–one of the most physically-demanding circuits on the AMA schedule–he realizes that may not be possible. Which means he may return on his YZF-R6 for Round Four, May 26-28 at Miller Motorsports Park, a track he has raced (and won) at before. “All I know is I want to get back on my bike,” said Gerloff.