Danny Kent, the 2015 Moto3 world champion, has been handed a suspended jail sentence for a knife offence, and lost his ride in the British Superbike Championship as a result.
Kent became Britain’s first grand prix motorcycle racing world champion since Barry Sheene’s second 500cc title win in 1977 when he won the 2015 Moto3 crown on a Leopard Honda.
The 25-year-old pleaded guilty at Cheltenham Magistrates’ Court this week to being in possession of a knife while involved in an altercation in a car park with a 63-year-old man in March.
Following his conviction, the MV Agusta Paramatta team that has recently run him in BSB moved to dismiss him immediately, with ex-Moto2 racer Gino Rea set to take his place at this weekend’s Cadwell Park round.
A BBC report said the scuffle was started when Kent’s older brother confronted the man while collecting a debt, with Kent said to have pushed the man off his brother.
The man saw the knife had fallen to the ground and alerted the police.
Kent admitted to having the knife but said he had no intention of using it, with his defence lawyer claiming it was merely for work use.
He was handed a four-month jail term, which has been suspended for a year, and was ordered to pay a £115 victim surcharge plus £85 court costs.
Kent apologised to the court for the incident.
Offered a MotoGP ride with the Pramac Ducati squad during his 2015 campaign, Kent ultimately opted for a return to Moto2 – where he had failed to make an impact in ’13 – with the Leopard-branded Kiefer Racing team, but struggled for success.
After just three races in 2017, he quit the Kiefer squad and then made sporadic Moto2 and Moto3 wildcard appearances with various teams across the year.
He made a full-time return to Moto2 the following season with Speed Up, but lost that ride towards the end of the year due to poor results – scoring just twice from 13 races.
Kent made a one-off appearance in BSB at last year’s season-ending Brands Hatch round with Halsall Racing Suzuki with a view of joining the team full-time for ’19.
This never materialised, and he spent the first half of the year searching for a ride until an opportunity to race an ex-World Superbike-spec MV Agusta in BSB for the remainder of the season came along.
From the two rounds Kent contested at Snetterton and Thruxton before his dismissal, he finished just one race and was out of the points in 18th.