DANNY KENT: MOTO3 TO BSB
It’s easy to assume Danny Kent’s route to Grand Prix was laid out before him from the moment he was born. As with so many young racers who end up leaving school and go on to race in the Spanish CEV championship, there’s the assumption they were born into a racing family, with a mother and father who had them on two wheels before they could walk, carefully mapping out a career for their offspring with the hopes of seeing them atop a podium at the highest level, regardless of cost and sacrifice. You’d be forgiven for thinking the same was true of Kent; he climbed the ladder with Red Bull holding its foot on the bottom rung, racing in Spain before making his way into 125 GPs. However, sacrifices aside, that was not the case.
“I accidentally started riding bikes, really,” Kent recalls. “I began riding minimotos at about six years old in 2001. My dad took me to the local kart track and the plan was to have a go in the karts, but I saw the bikes and asked if I could have a go on one of them instead. We then started going every Friday, and I just picked it up from there.
“It’s weird because I’m not from a motorcycling family. No one else in my family rode or raced bikes and weren’t even really into it as a sport, so when I started riding minimotos it was only ever for fun”.
That racing was for only fun is something Kent maintains was the case
