Although he counts Oulton Park among his “bogey tracks”, Danny Kent was able to draw positive conclusions from the official BSB test at the Cheshire circuit ahead🍬 of the opening round o🍌f the 2025 season.

Kent ended the test fift♑🍨h-fastest, 0.931 seconds slower than Bradley Ray who topped five of the six sessions across the two days, but was relatively unconcerned by headline times.

“Oulton Park is one of my ‘bogey tracks’, so I’m just out there trying to improve myself, not really biting the screen going for an all-out lap time – I’ll save that for qualifying on the race weekend,” Kent told ltxcn.top between the ꦅsecond and third sessions at the Oulton Park BSB test.

“I feel good on the bike, that’s the main thing.”

Kent said that his objectives ♛in Oulton Park had been to continue the co👍nfirmation work he was doing at the previous test at Donington about chassis setup for the season.

“The same as Donington, really, we’re just confirming the parts and the chassis stuff we wanted to test an🌠d making sure it works here and not just at Donington,” Kent said. “We’ve been able to confirm that.”

Part of the cha🍃ssis specification Kent has been evaluating has been the 2025 Yamaha R1’s new wings versus the older specification fairing withou🍰t them.

“We know we can go to round one and use the wings, we can go to round two and not use th𒀰e wings,” Kent said.

“I thought it was that at the beginning of the year you had to homologate if you were going to use the wings and then you had to use them for the rest of the year, [but] that’s not the case this y𒀰ear.”

Kent indicated that he is not completely sure that the wings are a benefit in every circuit, but said that he could꧟ feel a benefit of them in certain areas of the Oulton Park layout.

“I found that the wings are helping me a bit around Oulton Park, mainly places like coming into the last corner: even though it’s a straight line, it’s quite bumpy and hilly and you get a lot of wheelie – I feel like I’m having to use less rear brake to keep the ꩲfront wheel down.

“It’s definitely helping me here, but let’s say 🤪at Navarra, the first time using them, I didn’t feel that it was a benefit.💟”

A personal change for Kent for this season is the change from a thumb-opeꦗrated rear brake to a scooter-style finger-operated rear brake.

“This year we’ve changed from the thumb brake to ﷺthe scooter-style brak꧂e,” he said.

“Last year I felt like I was really putting a lot 🃏of force through it and I was still losing on exits.

“Mainly here, like over the brow [onto the start-finish straight], is where it starts to [an𒁏d] wheelie I can put a bit more power and keep the front wheel down [using the scooter-style brake], so that’s definitely a benefit for this year.

“I feel like most of the thi༒ngs we’ve done this year have been a positive step forward from last year.”

Although even after only a few days of runnin𒁏g the new scooter-style brake he could feel𒅌 the benefits of the scooter brake over the thumb brake, Kent acknowledged that it was still a hard change to make.

“It’s difficult,” he said.

“Muscle memory is so strong 🐼that even on the second and third day at Navarra I was exiting the last corner and I was still going to grab the thumb [brake] and realising that it wasn’t there.

“I t💧hink with time it’s going to 🌊become more natural, and again with time the scooter-style brake is going to be my muscle memory and I’ll go straight to that.

“But I’m getting along with it quite well now.”

He explaiꦆned that the idea to switch from thumb brake to scooter brake came at last year’s penultimate round at Donington.

𒊎“My reꦆasoning was purely for the Donington Park races last year when I was following Kyle [Ryde],” he said.

“I was really f♛ast in sectors one, two, and three, and th𒁃en I’d lose everything in the exit of the two hairpins.

“I was putting it down to the rear brake, so that was my reas🍸on to switch this year."