QMMF Racing Team’s Mika Kallio in action during practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix’s Moto2 race at Sepang International Circuit yesterday; (below) teammate Julian Simon.
Agencies/Sepang, Malaysia
QMMF Racing Team rider Mika Kallio started the Malaysian Grand Prix with a bang, pushing his Speed Up bike to fourth position in the first free practice session yesterday morning. In the afternoon, he dropped back to eleventh place.
His ninth place in the combined standings does not reflect his true potential. Forced to save on the allocation of the harder tyre compound that works best at Sepang, he ran the second session on used tyres and will only attack again when it counts in qualifying today.
“The morning session was especially positive for us. I am satisfied with the first exit, because we immediately got a good lap time, in only the third lap. It doesn’t take me a long time to get the rhythm, which is good,” the Finnish rider said.
“After that, we tried both tyre options. We started with the hard compound and in the end, we saw that the soft one doesn’t work for us. We struggled to get grip out of it, even on the first laps. This was an important part of our work because it became obvious that we need to save as many hard tyres as we can for tomorrow and for Sunday. This is why we ran the afternoon session on used tyres, which was not good for us as far as lap times go. We only have four hard tyres in total and the situation is not easy for us because we would also like to test some new parts, and if you don’t have the correct tyres on the bike you are going in circles. But I believe our base with correct tyres is not bad at all,” added Kallio, whose best lap of the day was a 2:08.344.
Julian Simon was a strong tenth in the morning session and came to the same conclusion with his tyre choice as his Finnish teammate. With a return to a standard chassis and a standard bike set-up for comparison tests with recent development parts, he dropped back to 15th place in the afternoon.
“The feeling with the bike on this track is not bad. This morning I was in the top ten, this afternoon a little further back, but all in all, we are not far away. We returned to the settings from the beginning of the season with our standard chassis, because comparing the standard bike with what we had in recent races will give us indications where to go in the future with the development of the bike. Tomorrow I will try to go faster, but the crucial factor here in Malaysia is tyre wear. The softer compound was worn out in just two laps and now we have to work on a set-up that makes the harder option last the full race distance,” said Simon, who posted a time of 2:08.671 yesterday.
