Despite a difficult Friday, Kallio heads off to Silverstone qualifying on a good mood

Even though the track of Silverstone proved to be equally as challenging during free practices as Kallio suspected, the Finnish rider has not given up his hopes for a decent qualifying practice for Saturday. Kallio was placed 17th on the results list of Friday’s combined practices, with a 1 second gap to fastest man of the day, Sam Lowes. Even though his pace was far from remarkable, Kallio was still looking forward to managing better lap times during the upcoming weekend. 

-The Silverstone track is pretty unforgiving to ride and if all is not exactly in place, it is not an easy thing to get into rhythm on this circuit. I have not been able to enjoy riding yet, but I hope tomorrow will be better. We had the same issues during both FP1 and FP2 and went back and forth with the settings. Our aim was to enhance the front feel, but if this is done, the rear grip disappears and the tyres don’t last at all. With the current settings, I was able to ride 6-7 laps and then the tyres were finished. It is clear we cannot ride with these settings during the race, so we need to figure out something else, Kallio commented. 

Öhlins provided a new front fork for Kallio for the weekend and it was first tested during the afternoon’s second practice session. Kallio was not able to fully benefit from the upgrade part on Friday, as he had already finished his tyres for the day. He looks forward to better results on Saturday. 

-If we look at the positive side of things, the new front fork felt a bit better than the old one. I was not able to fully understand how much it will improve the front feel, since I had no fresh tyres left for yesterday to be used along with the new part., Kallio continued. 

Tomorrow Kallio and his team will experiment by shortening the wheel base for his bike and see if this modification can help regain the lost rear grip and protect the tyre from excessive wear. .

-I hope that the entity would work better together this time. I have always made better lap times with a shorter bike and with these settings the tyres should last longer too. The final practice session of Saturday is crucial for us, since then we need to decide how to proceed towards the qualifying and race. Now we are one second away from the fastest group and riding feels quite horrible, but I wish tomorrow we would find us closer to the top and I aim to halve the difference, or hopefully be even faster, Kallio finished.

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