Kallio: Trust towards the bike slowly improving

The Dutch TT weekend in Assen began on a positive note according to Moto2-rider Mika Kallio. After the free practices of Friday, Kallio was 13th in the combined timesheet, a 0.7 seconds behind fastest man of the day, Johann Zarco. Progress achieved with the bike made Kallio happy and even though they still could not quite match the pace of the top riders, Kallio is grateful the direction is right. 

 -I feel better now than ever before during this season. In previous races, the difficulties have already begun during free practice sessions and I have found myself placed on positions 20 and worse. Let’s see what tomorrow brings, as we need a good position in qualifying to be competitive on Saturday, Kallio stated. 

 -We are not yet on the level I look forward to reaching, but I hope we’ll find some further improvement on the bike before qualifying. I appreciate that we now don’t need to switch the settings back and forth so radically as during the previous weekends, as it is quite challenging for the rider when such big changes are performed constantly. The process is easier if a direction for the settings is decided early on and then the bike is just fine tuned during the weekend. This is a new luxury for me and the team, and brings also some consistency and a peaceful atmosphere to our work, as it has been quite hectic before, Kallio continued. 

 Many riders in the Moto2-class have struggled with their tyres this season and especially the harder tyre mix by Dunlop has been reported as challenging to use on the track of Assen. 

 -It has surprised me how much problems teams are having with the tyres this year, I also did not manage to make decent laps here in Assen with the harder tyre option mix. Basically this means that I am forced to use only the soft tyres during this weekend, which limits our options a lot, Kallio commented. 

 -Tomorrow we are supposed to ride with soft option tyres, which have already been used for 32 laps. This means that times won’t be that good to start with, but I hope that they won’t cause excessive problems, as we have enough of that sort already to deal with, Kallio laughed. 

For Friday’s qualifying Kallio takes off feeling confident. 

-My trust towards the bike has grown slowly, but now I feel a small improvement. I know we are still far from the needed pace and last year’s results, but I aim nevertheless to reach the top three rows in qualifying, Kallio finished.

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