British rider Danny Kent will start tomorrow’s Gran Premi Aperol de Catalunya full of confidence that he can challenge for his first Moto2 World Championship points after a positive qualifying performance in sizzling heat today.
Kent will start the 23-lap race from 17th position on the grid, the Tech 3 Racing Team rider capitalizing on a morale-boosting recent test session in Mugello to finish just over 0.5s outside of the top six at the Circuit de Catalunya near Barcelona.
Without the time constraints of a Moto2 weekend, Kent was able to improve his confidence and feeling on the Mistral 610 machine and today he was able to show more of the potential that took him to two victories in the new Moto3 category last year.
Kent posted a best time of 1.47.803, which was only just over 0.7s from compatriot and World Championship leader Scott Redding in second position. The most pleasing aspect of Kent’s performance today was his consistency and he is now confident that he be in the hunt for a top 15 finish tomorrow.
Louis Rossi will start from a further six places back, the Frenchman less than 0.2s behind as today’s timesheets once again perfectly illustrated the close level of competition in Moto2. Less than two seconds covered the top 31 riders and Rossi’s personal best of 1.47.986 was less than a second off the front row.
Danny Kent 17th 1.47.803 -21 laps:
“I am happy with today’s qualifying because the position and time is much closer to where we need to be. It’s not my best result of the year, but I believe in terms of consistency it’s definitely the best performance I have put in on track so far. I’m also happy about the positive feeling with the bike that I carried over from the test day in Mugello and I’m really confident for tomorrow. I just have to do a good start and be a bit more aggressive during the opening laps because during the previous races I always lose positions at that stage of the race and then I struggle to recover them later.”
Louis Rossi 23rd 1.47.986 – 20 laps:
“During the whole weekend we have made consistent progress and I have found a lot of confidence coming back. We resolved a couple of issues I’ve been experiencing like sliding on corner entry and now the bike is working much better for me. I can finally say I enjoy riding the bike again and that is the most important thing after some tough races. Obviously we are a little upset about the result of qualifying because I decided to ride alone for the whole weekend to understand better what I do on the bike. But this strategy is difficult for qualifying, as I did not have any slipstream. Anyway after looking at the timesheets I saw that I could have been 15th on the grid if I did my fastest sector times in the same lap and that gives me huge confidence for tomorrow.”
Tech 3 Racing Press Release
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