Doha: QMMF Racing Team rider Mika Kallio scored eighth place at the Australian Grand Prix, but was not entirely happy with the way the race went.
After a start from the second row on the grid, the 32-year-old held fourth and fifth place on the opening laps, but realized quickly that it was not his day to fight for a podium finish.
An unexplainable lack of rear tyre grip cost him between half a second and one second per lap and there was little he could do to prevent his strongest rivals from attacking.
Team-mate Julian Simon had hoped to be able to solve his problems in the last left-hand corner of the track, but it turned out that the 24-lap race distance was an even tougher challenge than qualifying practice.
Starting from tenth on the grid, he was 14th and 15th on the first two laps, but then dropped out of the point rankings and finished the race in 18th place.
“From the beginning of the race, our lap times were completely different to Saturday, like half to one second slower and we don’t know why. Everything was exactly the same as yesterday on the bike, but I didn’t have enough grip on the rear with the same tyre, whereas some other riders were able to keep the same pace. The guys we were beating on Saturday in the fight for a good grid position were much faster than us,” said Kallio.
“For me, this is something really strange. I don’t understand those tyres at all. The rider was the same, the bike and the tyre was the same, even the weather and track conditions were not really different but we still lost one second of our lap time. I expected to be much faster and in a better position in the race, but we couldn’t follow the front guys at all. For the first two, three laps, I manage to stay on the same rhythm, but after that I dropped a lot of speed,”he added.
The Peninsula
