Edwards and Toseland Should...

Its a shame that it never occurred to anyone at Yamaha that perhaps Edwards and Toseland would have been a great asset to their WSBK title hopes if they had been at Magny Cour and both CAN be an asset if they ride at Portimao. Both are great superbike riders and neither have much invested in the motogp world championship, especially Toseland. If I were Massimo Merigali I would have taken either or both from tech 3 for Portimao as payment for Ben Spies.

Yamaha already had the MotoGP constructors on a virtual lock before Portugal, and with both Rossi and Lorenzo pretty safe from either Stoner or Pedrosaf or the Riders Championship, Tech 3 wasn't/isn't really needed to help them (not like they would ever finish ahead of stoner/pedrosa under normal circumstances).

The schedule conflicts between the WSBK and GP rounds is probably what made this impractical, but
in their place in the Grand Prix races Yamaha could have put in some young kids (a la esparago for pramac) just to see scope out new talent and fill the grid.

The only issue would be whether or not edwards or toseland could get up to speed fast enough on the R1 to even finish ahead of haga, which is interesting in itself. Simoncelli managed to go decently fast for a non-superbike guy, but edwards and toseland never rode a recent yamaha sbk, let alone the crossplane (although the m1 is supposed to be 'similar' in engine characteristics)

Any thoughts?

I suppose you all are right, sponsors and their lawyers would have been the roadblock to this in the end, but if the reports are true and Edwards is the Yamaha backed man on tech 3 then the factory could have potentially pulled more weight then the sponsors. Since Toseland gets his checks signed by poncharal himself the chances of any negotiating room their are slim.

I do want Spies to win the championship, but it is incredibly difficult to root against a talented rider who has been working for 10+ years for this moment versus a rookie who has time on his side. Championships in any class do mean a lot, but whenever its not the Premier series and riders step up, it complicates the championship with too many variables. The old 'if so and so didn't go to GP's so and so wouldn't have won just kills any championship stat tracking for me in wsbk. ITs still a good show though. Portimao should be intense, unless ben feks it up in race one.