Thomas Lüthi
After a 2004 season filled with bike reliability issues, Kallio took his first championship pole position and victory at the second round of the 2005 season at Estoril. He went on to take seven more poles and three more wins and lost the world title by just five points to Thomas Lüthi. He lost five points at the fourth-last Grand Prix in Qatar when his KTM teammate, Gábor Talmácsi, pulled out from behind the slipstream and passed him on the last few metres of the race to take the win by 0.017 seconds. Kallio had started from pole position and led every lap of the race and was not pushing on the home straight anymore, as Talmácsi had been ordered to stay back by the team because he was not a title contender. Talmácsi was fired after the season finale at Valencia.