Kallio to test new front fork in Silverstone

Mika Kallio’s season will continue during the upcoming weekend on the track of Silverstone, Great Britain. Kallio, who finished second during this GP last year, has yet no clear feeling on how the weekend will play out. 

-The track of Silverstone is definitely not an easy one for me, even though I have managed to bring home some decent results before. The first half of the season was quite rough for us, but now we try improve race by race and focus on developing our act in all GP’s as we go along. This is one of those tracks, where the settings really need to be in place in order to ride for competitive results, Kallio commented. 

The Silverstone circuit is one of the longest tracks on the world championship tour and as for conditions, the typical, erratic British weather adds on the excitement during the GP weekend. 

-If the weather is sunny, the temperature can rise up to nearly twenty degrees celsius. On the other hand, it rains almost every year. Through experience, we have learnt to expect pretty much everything else, except snow. If the conditions are wet or cold, the track temperature drops quite much and maintaining a good grip on the tyres becomes challenging for everyone, Kallio continued. 

Kallio has struggled during the season with his bike’s front and now Öhlins has provided a new front fork for him to try out this weekend. The upgrade part will be tested to see if it can offer any improvement in finding the long lost front tyre grip and therefore enable easier entering in to corners. 

-Let’s see if the new front fork is good for us, but at least in theory, it should help add more pressure to the front tyre upon entering corners. If this happens, the front should not spring up too quickly when easing up on the breaks and the tyre would behave better grip-wise, as the pressure would not be lost. while slowing down, Kallio explained. 

Changing the front fork should not have a dramatic effect on the rest of the bike’s settings, so Kallio and his team are not facing a major workload due to new upgrade part. 

-Naturally all changes affect the behaviour of the bike, but I suspect we will continue with the familiar setting base with the new fork. We have anyhow nothing to lose, so if drastic changes need to be done, we’ll give them a try too. Tomorrow after the second practice we’ll see if the new parts help us, so fingers crossed, Kallio finished.

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