Roberts makes one very astute point - "Until they can get a rider that can push that motorcycle to it's limit, they're going to be 4-5 seconds off the pace...there's not that many riders that can ride that motorcycle to it's limit - that I know... but they've got to be able to go faster than what they''re going right now, otherwise they screwed up so bad."
We have a disparity between the top CRTs (Espargaro, De Puniet) and the top Factory riders (Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Stoner, Dovisiozo, Rossi, Spies) and the rest that often gets ignored. Within the factory riders there is also a gap - Stoner, Lorenzo, Pedrosa - arguably Rossi - are much better than the rest. Spies and Dovi have flashes of brilliance, but it's so few and far between that it counts as an anomaly.
So there is the real problem - there isn't enough talent. Actually, that's not quite true. There's plenty of talent, enough to give us a fight, at least. But little enough that they really shouldn't have a situation where one of the brightest of those talents has decided to hang up his gloves because of ......... And there are two talents (Espargaro and De Puniet) riding round on CRTs while the likes of Crutchlow and Bautista have factory bikes... that they are doing ....-all with.
The CRTs are banging on the door of good performance, after less than a year of competition. They aren't the dogs that were predicted. But the difference between Aleix and Randy and the Honda of Bautista was about a third of a second and less than a second to the Tech3. I wonder what those two riders would be doing with a Gresini, an LCR? Are we missing out on another Simoncelli here? De Puniet qualified his ART 1.6 seconds down on Pedrosa - that's a guy riding the socks of his bike, right there.
So much has been said of who 'deserves' a factory ride for next year but those two names never come up - de Puniet and Espargaro - and I wonder why? On current performance, they are the stand-out lower order team riders that really deserve a shot at the good stuff, IMO.
