As I started to write my column this week, I read comments from Wayne Gardner and Casey Stoner talking about the current state of MotoGP and decided to give my thoughts on some of the issues they raised.

Gardner wrote that the only thing that can save MotoGP right now is if Rossi moves to Ducati. Well sure, Rossi could move to Ducati but once the novelty of that has worn off, the harsh reality is that unless something is quickly done to make the series more competitive across the board, we will have problems. It won’t matter where Rossi, Stoner or Lorenzo are riding next year if there are only 12 bikes on the grid.

And the reason why we have two unknown riders replacing Rossi and Aoyama is because quite simply, there is no one else out there who can do the job. I’ve been writing for years that these motorcycles have become such robots that it takes a special rider to make them go as fast as they are capable of, so to find a couple of riders in the middle of the racing season who could do the job is a big ask. There’s hot talk right now that De Angelis might be drafted in for Aoyama and as he has experience on the 800 he’s a smart choice.

Casey said a similar thing when questioning Yoshikawa as a replacement for Rossi and I understand where he’s coming from, but when we’ve seen a lot of seriously talented guys being thrown off their bikes this year, can we then expect someone outside the series to get on the bike and say with confidence ‘Let’s do this’? I don’t think so, with the lack of testing there is no chance outside of a race weekend for a replacement rider to get to grips with the bike so anyone coming in is really going to struggle. If it wasn’t for the regulations dictating that the team had to replace Rossi after a few races, maybe the #46 bike would be kept in the garage with its engine on ice until Vale came back.

Wayne Gardner also said that he feels that the riders are a bit soft now and that when they get injured they end up running mid pack. Listen, back when Wayne and I were racing a good rider could make a bad bike look good, that’s impossible now and that situation hasn’t existed for the last 3 or 4 years. Now you need both rider and bike at 100% and with things so finely poised if either one of these things isn’t perfect the rider is going to slip down the order.

Many of you would have seen the MotoGP movie ‘Faster’ from a few years back, where Jerry Burgess said at the time in Formula 1, the car is 80% of the equation and the driver is 20%, while in MotoGP the rider is 80% and the bike is 20%. Well let me tell you it is probably more like 40/60 now in favor of the bike, so while fast riders will always be fast, when there is an issue with the bike the riders’ skill has a hard time making up the deficit. This is why we have two former world champions in Stoner and Pedrosa struggling to be competitive week in, week out.

So how has it come to this? The regulations for the 800cc bikes have caused the bikes to evolve into machines that are devastatingly fast yet are real sensitive to setup and riding style, with the added disadvantage of being very expensive to develop and maintain. The revised regulations need to curb the inclusion of expensive technology where possible to reduce costs and make the riders a bigger part of the overall performance picture. At the end of the day, it is making sure that the smallest garage in the paddock has a fighting chance, rather than playing to the tune of the factory teams.

So let’s stop the development of the 800cc bikes right now and look towards 2012. Next year we might end up with a hybrid class of the existing 800’s bikes and the new 1000cc bikes which is ok so long as everyone is running the same kind of bike the following year. If this is done right, not only will racing improve but I am sure the paddock will grow in size as new teams join in to join the party.

Such a change will be of particular help to Suzuki who should cut their losses with the current GSV-R and focus on the future, so they can develop a competitive package for 2012. This needs to happen as we can’t afford another manufacturer to leave the series - Suzuki dropped out of racing back in ‘83 for a year when I was racing for them and if they were to leave this time it would take a real shift in the current setup to entice them back.

What I would love to see is a return to the days when we had Toni Elias sneak a win at Estoril or Marco Melandri dominated at Phillip Island on non-factory machines like they did in 2006, it’s fairytale stories like this that made MotoGP so great, everyone loves a David vs. Goliath story but now David has no stone for his sling.

Back to the racing, Honda has a great shot at winning the next race at Barcelona with the speed it has shown so far, but Lorenzo is under no pressure as finishing 2nd doesn’t hurt his championship challenge at all and with his form at the moment he will be backing himself for the win in front of his home crowd. After showing awesome speed at Assen, Randy De Puniet has a good chance at the podium and the time is right for Simoncelli to see if he can mix it with the leading pack as Ben Spies has done at the last couple of races.

With the race running on the 4th of July, let’s hope Nicky, Ben or Colin pull something special out of the bag and make Catalunya 2010 a race to remember!

Randy