Preparing for the heat of Texas in snowy Lapland

The Moto2-race season of 2015 commenced with a 6th position in Qatar for the Finn Mika Kallio last weekend. The race result was a positive one, even though no podium positions were reached. The numerous difficulties experienced during the weekend, resulting from undiscovered bike settings, drove Kallio far away from the pole position and he was forced to start from the 16th place on the grid. 

 During this weekend the world championship series will see it’s second race of the season take place in Austin, Texas. After the Qatar race Kallio and his family took off to Lapland for the Easter break to relax and prepare for the upcoming challenges. Skiing, iceroadracing and crosskarting took care of physical training and now Kallio is ready for the fight in Austin and the demanding track of Circuit of the Americas. 

 -I have good positions from Austin previously and I like the design of the track. This track is actually more challenging than you could imagine, since there are a lot of ups and downs on this track and many hard breaking points. There are many long straits, but the breakings are really demanding and we need to use the first gear several times on the track, which is quite rare, explains Kallio. 

 After the Qatar GP Kallio and his team, Italtrans, together made the decision to use the 2015 Kalex chassis at least for the races of Texas and Argentina. They have however not yet abandoned the possibility to use the old 2014 chassis for the upcoming European GPs. 

 -The team and I have pondered all winter long on the question on which bike to use this season, the 2014 or the 2015 model. We will give the new model one last try in the overseas races of Austin and Argentina, but if the difficulties continue, we will revert back to the old bike. At this point however we will focus fully on reaching the potential of the new bike and do everything in our power to get the best out of it, Kallio declares. 

 -For today’s practices we will go out with the same settings as in Austin and continue the work from there. All tracks have their own specifications which affect the settings and we have a clear plan on what to do here in terms of developing the bike. We were forced to do some pretty quick decisions in Qatar, so this time we will try to focus on analysing the bike’s performance and behaviour carefully before deciding upon what to do, Kallio states. 

 The Austin Grand Prix will take place on the Circuit of the Americas track during 10th-12th April. The Finnish channel Nelonen Pro 1 will air the free practices live, starting on Friday night at 23pm. 

 

 

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