The second half of the 2015 Moto3™ World Championship has not gone to plan for Britain’s Danny Kent. His last podium finish came in Silverstone, the following five races barren of a top three result. The struggle continued in Qualifying as Kent’s Leopard Racing team altered the gearbox, producing yet more problems and seeing the Brit only able to set a 1’40.013. Despite being just 0.619s from pole position, Kent will start Sunday’s Moto3™ race at the Gran Premio Motul de la Comunitat Valenciana in 18th position. To guarantee the World Title he needs just 14th place, but with times so tight even this could prove difficult.

Another gearbox change awaits on Sunday morning for Kent and his team, the change they made on Saturday making the gearing too short and causing Kent to hit the limiter on multiple occasions. Picking his way through the field on Sunday will be difficult and Kent’s main aim remains staying upright and collecting at least two points from 14th place. Regardless of result, both Kent and title rival Miguel Oliveira (Red Bull KTM Ajo) will be teammates in the Moto2™ World Championship in 2016 for the Leopard Racing team.

Danny Kent:

 “Of course it was a difficult qualifying and definitely the most worse of the year. It’s frustrating because we made the job a lot harder for ourselves. We made the gearbox a little bit shorter compared to the rest of the weekend and I reached the limiter too many times around one lap, so I lost out at many places. So for tomorrow we will make a change to the gearbox and we also will try to improve the feeling with the bike. On the other hand we made little steps forward in respect to the bike’s setting from yesterday but we need to work on that too. In terms of pace we’re not that far away but unfortunately we were not able to put one lap together. During each lap more or less one sector got worse. The only thing we can do now is to try to do a good and clever race tomorrow because it could be one of the biggest days in my career. Anyway, the main thing is to stay on the bike and finish within the top 14.”