Slight development during free practices offers no comfort for Kallio

The third free practice session of Qatar GP took place on the Losail circuit on Friday, 29th of March. The Finn Mika Kallio found a quicker pace on Friday, compared to the first free practice sessions of Thursday. Overall Kallio reached position 13 in the combined times, 1,6 seconds behind of the Brit rider Sam Lowes. Even though the gap was smaller than on Thursday, this did not cheer up Kallio. 

 -In a sense today was easier, because we did not face as much technical difficulties compared to the experience of Thursday. Anyhow we are quite a bit behind from our desired pace, lap times and the fastest guys on track. The feeling with the bike is not there yet and riding is a bit of a struggle before we come up with the suitable settings we are constantly looking for, Kallio stated. 

 -Today we tried to mimic the bike settings of last year and even installed a few parts from the 2014 bike, including the front fork. They did not work miracles, unfortunately, and we are yet to find the solution on how to get more grip to the front. This grip issue affects my ability to turn the bike when entering corners and changes the bike’s behaviour in an undesired way, Kallio analysed. 

 The time is running out on finding the correct settings before the race and the team does not have many working hours on their hands to solve the issues needed before Saturday. Kallio and his team are anyhow doing their utmost best to get the bike to race condition as soon as possible. 

 -Tomorrow we need to experiment with some new settings for the bike, especially concerning the parts which affect weight distribution on the bike. We will work with the parts chosen on Thursday and will not change them anymore, but we will sit down with the chassis provider Kalex and the shock provider Öhlins and see if they have any ideas that might help us. 

 It is clear at this point that Kallio is not happy with the performance of the current bike, but he still aims to reach the third row on the starting grid. 

 -We need to think through our tactics for the qualifying and also decide which tyres we will use in the race. If we reach third row for the start, meaning position nine or better in the qualifying, I am satisfied given the tough conditions. In the big picture this does not offer comfort since me and my team are here to fight for top positions, but if I acquire a decent starting place maybe the race will not be so bad, Kallio finished. 

 The qualifying practice for Moto 2 will take place on Saturday, 28th of March at 17:55pm Finnish time. The first race of the season begins on Sunday 29th of March at 19:20 Finnish time. 

 

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