Difficult start for Kallio to the race season of 2015

 

The first qualifying practice of Moto2-class for the season 2015 took place on Saturday beneath the beautiful night lights of Losail Circuit in Qatar. Kallio,who has struggled with his bike’s settings during all the winter tests, got offered no easy way out of the tricky situation yet. The bike was still not at a desired level and Kallio found himself finally from starting position 16 for the race, qualifying a whole 1,5 seconds slower than pace setter Sam Lowes. This position is a huge disappointment to the vice world champion of last year, who was definitely expecting more. 

 -This whole weekend has been just the disaster we were afraid of in the first place. We still have massive issues on trying to find out what causes the bike to behave in such a way and we still have no grip whatsoever on the front. We are starting to run out of tricks and twists, so I am afraid this weekend will not create many good memories for us, a disappointed Kallio said. 

 -Once again we did radical changes with the set-up of the bike, meddling with the balance of it. We changed the weight distribution so that more pressure was set to the front. Sadly, I noticed during the first laps of the qualifying that the bike actually became worse to handle. 

 In addition for the feverish search for correct settings, Kallio was also distracted by an unfortunate technical fault, which caused his bike’s engine to fail when he exited the pit box after a quick pit stop. The team was unable to start the engine and finally they needed to change the gasoline pump to a new one to get the bike up and running. This caused Kallio to lose another precious 15 minutes during the qualifying. 

 -After a few laps I came in to change some settings and when trying to get back on track, the bike’s engine failed in the middle of the pit lane and we had to drag the bike by foot back to the pit box. This probably had no effect on the final result, but we really would have needed that lost quarter of an hour to improve. 

 -The last ride of today was a bit better regarding the front feel, but that was definitely too small of an improvement to offer actual benefit regarding the lap times. I am not at ease with the bike at the moment and it does not fit my riding style at all the the way it is set up now. This naturally has an effect on the feeling and my trust towards the bike as well. 

 The first race of the season 2015 will take place on Sunday. Kallio, who got last season very much used to finishing on top positions, knows and admits it will not happen in this season's premiere and this upsets the motivated rider quite a lot. 

 -There are no wonders left on the list we are able to perform before tomorrow, but for sure we will take still some risks still during warm up, because we have basically nothing to lose. I will try to lessen the gap by making wise decisions in the start and I’ll try to steer clear of the heavy traffic in the first corners after the start, where riders typically lose time, Kallio wraps up. 

 The first race of the season 2015 will take place on Sunday 29th of March in Qatar. A live tv-broadcast will air in Finland on Nelonen Pro1-channel.

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