Kallio’s Friday failed in Motegi due to weight distribution issues

The free practices of Friday were troublesome for Mika Kallio at the track of Twin Ring Motegi in Japan. During the first session of the morning, Kallio immediately experienced a dramatic drop in the bike’s mobility upon entering corners. Turning the bike was hard and even though many changes were made to the bike’s settings, the same problems followed him during FP2 in the afternoon. 

In the combined results list of Friday Kallio ended up in position 22, with a gap of 1,809 seconds to the fastest man of the day, Johann Zarco.  

-There is no way I can be happy with this result. We were completely lost today starting from the first laps and we couldn’t solve the issues until it was too late. I was constantly going back and forth to the pits to make changes to the bike, but found no help in tackling the problem faced. Same story for the second session, it felt like we were lightyears behind others, Kallio huffed. 

The reason for the failed Friday might lurk in a solution discovered in the final hours of the evening’s debriefing meeting. 

-We were really bewildered what had happened since the successful first weekend in Aragon. The bike felt like a completely different device and I had a horrible time at the track attempting to wrestle with it. We were scratching our heads for hours trying to understand what’s wrong, when thankfully my chief mechanic suddenly realised that the extra weights used in my bike were placed differently as before. I have as much as 9 kilos of extra weight on my bike, so maybe this was the reason, Kallio pondered. 

In the Moto2-class the rule book states that the racebike and rider - combination needs to weigh at least 215 kilos put together. As Kallio is a lightweight rider in his class, he needs to apply a load of extra weight on his bike. 

-9 kilos as such is quite an amount to be placed on a bike and if the weight is not distributed properly, racing becomes a casual joyride and you can forget about clocking fast lap times. 

Let’s hope that tomorrow will be better once we get the weights back to where they previously were located in Aragon, Kallio stated. 

The Finn will not consent to speculations about the results of Saturday’s qualifying practice, but he is surely hungry for improvement. 

-It is hard to say what will happen tomorrow afternoon, but my goal is to be higher on the grid than I was in Aragon, where my qualifying position was 15th. Achieving this requires finding settings that make me feel confident, but there’s thankfully one more practice session to go before that. 

Johann Zarco secured his Moto2 world championship title in Motegi on Friday, when it was confirmed that Tito Rabat is not able to take part to the Japanese grand prix due to his injured and recently operated hand. Zarco’s previously gathered points entitle him to the championship crown of the season 2015. 

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