American Garrett Gerloff exceeded his team’s expectations in their initial test together, and Gerloff will be a regular World Superbike top-five finisher and can race for podium positions in 2025, the owner of his new team says.
In an interview at EICMA with WorldSBK.com, Manuel Puccetti said Gerloff, who will join Puccetti Racing on the official Kawasaki ZX-10RR in 2025, impressed from the very first laps in the post-season test at Jerez.
“In Jerez, we tested Garrett Gerloff, the new rider for next year. He was directly very fast,” Puccetti said. “He was quite competitive, leading almost all day. Gerloff was very, very fast. Much more competitive than we expected. I don’t want to fly too high, but for sure the pace was quite good. I think … with his talent and speed, his age, everything, I think the rider can be often top five and we dream also to be on the podium.”
With the Kawasaki factory efforts moving to the BbKRT team and the Kawasaki-powered KB998 for 2025, Puccetti says his team will not simply inherit the former factory ZX-10RRs in 2024 specification, but already is testing upgrades.
“The base will be the bike from this year for sure, but already on the second day we tested new parts for the engine, some updates for the suspension, other things,” Puccetti said.
The team also will be running the new 2025 Kawasaki ZX-6R in the Supersport World Championship with Jeremy Alcoba. Puccetti says that he expects the new 636cc machine, which Kawasaki will homologate for 2025, will be “very competitive from the beginning” of the year.
