Kallio dismayed after another costly crash

There was heartbreak again for Mika Kallio on Sunday as he rode well in the early stages of the bwin.com Grande Premio de Portugal race, before crashing out on lap six when fighting to maintain sixth place.

Kallio has now crashed out of races on five occasions in his rookie MotoGP campaign and has managed to score points in just eight races, which has been frustrating for both him and his team, given his undoubted talent. The Finn has three more races this season to mark up some good results and he will have to look for more consistency next year, having renewed his Pramac contract for 2010 last week.

After Sunday’s race he commented, “I am very disappointed. I was doing really well and all of a sudden I myself on the ground. I wasn’t pushing too much, in that part of the track you don’t accelerate or brake, you just maintain the rhythm to accelerate later while exiting the corner going to the final straight. The front gave up on me and I slid to the dirt on the side of the track. I am very sorry for all the team, they deserved a good result and I hope to do better in these last three races.”

Fabiano Sterlacchini, the Pramac Racing Technical Director, added, “We are very disappointed that Mika lost the chance to get a good result. He deserved it for how the weekend went. During the warm up we found a really good solution on the bike and we got the fifth fastest lap of the session. In the race things seemed to go in the right direction, but we all know how things ended.”

“Back in the garage Mika told us he wasn’t pushing and he suddenly lost the front. We will try to understand what has happened when we look at the data. We hope that we will be able to do much better in the next race in Australia.”