Sean Dylan Kelly knows he has to step it up. His career is on the line.

“It’s a big year for me. It’s my second year in Moto2, and as of right now I only have a contract until the end of this season. What the future holds for me depends on how I do this year,” Kelly, 20, said in an interview with Roadracing World in Portugal at the 2023 Grand Prix season opener.

Kelly got his first taste of the Moto2 World Championship in 2019, running as a wildcard with the new American Racing Team at the season-ending race in Valencia. He went back to the United States, won the MotoAmerica Supersport Championship, then returned to Europe to race full-time in one of the most competitive classes in the world.

So far the results have not been what Kelly wanted — a best finish of 11th place at a rain-lashed Thailand Grand Prix last year. He knew that in 2022, the learning curve would be steep. And there were unexpected challenges, difficulties he never had faced in his career. This year, he says, he knows he has to put it together and get the finishes he wants.

“Last year was a very, very tough season,” Kelly says. “On the technical side, a Moto2 bike is a different story. It does not compare to what I was riding. I definitely had some troubles getting to understand this bike. It’s a GP chassis — it’s so stiff, so rigid. And at the beginning of the season I had some crashes that really knocked my confidence. I felt like I was in a bit of a hole that I struggled to get out of. I struggled to get the most out of myself…”

Read the rest of the interview with Sean Dylan Kelly in an upcoming issue of Roadracing World & Motorcycle Technology magazine.