Mika Kallio says his aim for tomorrow’s MotoGP race at Valencia is to battle with the guys around him and hopefully make up some places.
Kallio and the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing team will make their MotoGP race debut tomorrow in the closing race of the season, ahead of the team’s full-time assault on next year’s championship.
After a tough opening day at the Spanish track, the Finnish rider improved today, qualifying in 20th position and beating seasoned regulars Tito Rabat and Yonny Hernandez.
And he admitted that he was satisfied with today’s result, and hopes to build on it tomorrow.
“We improve a lot the lap time and at least there is now a few guys behind us and we can fight with the other guys, that’s important for the race,” he said.
“I’m satisfied, I can say I’m really, really satisfied about the laps we did. It was not one lap, it was a few good laps so that’s, I think, quite good for the race.
After having a few issues with spinning yesterday, Kallio says there was definitely a move in the right direction today, although he feels there is still a long way to go.
“We improve, we definitely improve but I think still this is one point where we need to improve more, because if we think about using the softer option for the race on the rear this could be critical because of the spinning and we still try to work more with the electronics to see if we can find something for this.
“After warm up we need to decide the tyre and also the set up for the bike we will see what happens. At the moment I’m not sure really which we will do.
“I said yesterday we are better over the long distance than one good lap so I’m quite confident we can go a little bit better than today.”
With thousands of miles of testing under his belt, the next big challenge is the first race and Kallio is aware anything could happen, but his aim is to make up a few places.
“For sure the first goal is to be with the other guys, this is the main thing, to see how they’re riding, how their bike is behaving.
“We still don’t know how our bike will be during this long distance. Of course we did a lot of laps during the testing and some race simulations but now it’s a different story.
“When we need to push more in this race the bike is behaving different, the tyres behaving different so we will see. I would say if we could improve a few positions that would be nice. That’s my target.”