More experience gained by Pramac pair at night test

Despite both crashing in Qatar and having finished outside the top ten on the final timesheet at the floodlit desert circuit on Tuesday night, Pramac Racing’s new rider line-up of Mika Kallio and Niccolò Canepa were in a positive frame of mind as they headed back to Europe.

Kallio took a tumble on Monday night, suffering a heavy crash, but the tough Finn was not overly concerned by the accident and got on with completing his work schedule on Tuesday evening in his typically understated style. The test was Kallio’s first experience of riding 800cc machinery under the Losail International Circuit’s state-of-the-art floodlights.

The 26 year-old ended up twelfth on the final timesheet, completing 54 laps in the concluding session, before commenting, “Tuesday went a bit better compared to Monday even if the feeling with the front part of the bike wasn’t the best. I couldn’t find the confidence to push that bit more. But I’m sure that when we come back for the first race of the season we’ll do much better. The track conditions should be much warmer and that should help us.”

For Kallio’s new team-mate Canepa, meanwhile, it was his very first opportunity to ride in Qatar and having lapped just off his colleague’s pace the Italian was unshaken by his own final session crash and content with the overall progress made.

The former test rider explained, “Like on Monday we chose not to go back on track in the last couple of hours because it was getting too cold. Some of the riders improved their best lap times in the last few minutes to overtook us in the classification. But that doesn’t matter too much. I am satisfied by the work done even if today I made a small mistake and I slipped. Luckily nothing serious happened. We will now go back home confident and with high morale, much happier than at the end of the Sepang test.”