He may have retired early from today’s race at Valencia, but Mika Kallio says he is happy with the progress the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing Team has made in its MotoGP debut.
Test rider Kallio and the team chose this round to make their first foray into the premier class paddock ahead of the team’s first full season last year.
After a tough start on Friday, things were looking up when they qualified 20th yesterday with a lap time much closer to the front runners, and hopes were high they would continue to move in the same direction today.
But an electrical fault scuppered the team’s plans, and Kallio was eventually forced to retire with 10 laps still to go with a sensor problem
“It was not the best finish for us, we wanted to see the last lap and the finish flag to finish the weekend in a good way, but what happened, happened, it seems that there was some sensor problem, some electrical problem,” he said.
“During the race I did maybe five, six, seven laps without any problem and then happened something and we basically broke one sensor quite early in the race and after that riding became much more complicated and it was at that point I started to lose the distance to the other guys and the lap time went the wrong way.
“I kept going but then in the end we struggled with the other sensor and it was impossible to continue so I decided to come in.”
It wasn’t the result he’d been looking for when the team first arrived with the stunning RC16 machine, but Kallio added that bigger picture makes much happier viewing.
“Even if that was a negative point I think generally we can be satisfied. We demonstrated that we are not miles away from the other bikes and we could be in the same group in the first laps.
“When the bike was still okay I could follow the other guys and fight with them and it’s good to know this now for the future.
“In these couple of laps I could see that definitely the engine is our strong point, I was really happy with how it was pulling out of the corners so this is good for us.
“Maybe the weak point was in the middle of the corner and the first part of the opening we need to improve rear grip somehow. That is where we are losing most of the time.
“The balance stays really good on that bike even with a full tank so I didn’t have any big problems on the first laps.
“Of course you can feel the weight on the bike and the brake points are a bit earlier but if I compare to the rest of the guys in the group I was riding then the middle we were the same. It’s just middle corner speed we are missing because of the grip.”