Confident Kent expecting a battle in Italy

Danny Kent claimed his fifth consecutive front row start and despite trailing Enea Bastianini by three tenths of a second the championship leader is confident for tomorrow’s race.

“Our aim was to be on the front two rows of the grid this weekend because that’s a strong achievement in Moto3,” Kent told MCN after qualifying. “All weekend I’ve felt good on the bike and the changes to the track have been good. We’ll have a big fight tomorrow, especially with Bastianini on pole. He’s trying to pick up some points on me and he’d love to win at home too so he’ll be strong tomorrow. But we’re ready to race tomorrow and fight. We had a few problems on the first run with the bike but when we came back in the bike felt good on the last exit. Overall I’m confident for tomorrow.”

In the race Kent feels that the Italian riders, racing in front of a home crowd, will be impossible to underestimate and he expects there to be plenty of competition for the podium places but overall he’s confident that he has the pace and consistency to match and beat anyone.

“We’re in the backyard of the Italian riders and they’re strong this weekend but we’re ready for tomorrow’s race. In FP2 and FP3 were fastest so it’s been a good weekend. The other guys set their fast times on the soft tyre and we set ours on the medium. The race will depend on my start and whether the other guys start fighting. On the basis of the rest of the weekend there’ll be a big fight and we’ll have to get our elbows out! I think that there’ll be five or six riders fighting for the win. I think that we’ve got good consistency and our times on race tyres have been as good as most guys on the softer tyres.”