It’s hard to keep up with the MotoGP rider rumour mill – who has a contract for 2014, who doesn’t, and who has a contract that might not end up being worth the paper it’s written on. But what it all adds up to is too many riders for not enough bikes, and pressure on certain riders.

Our very own rookie Bradley Smith is one of those riders, and there’s plenty of discussion about his performance this year.

He’s spoken about how the gap to the winner is more important to him in gauging his progress than outright finishing position. It’s a good point, but I think there’s another way to look at it too.

His satellite Tech 3 Yamaha is a competitive machine, so on paper he ought to be beating the CRT bikes, and at least having a bash at the prototype stragglers – Ducati, essentially. So: how many CRT bikes have been finishing ahead of him, and how many prototype bikes has he been beating?

It’s not an entirely straightforward comparison – there’s been injury aplenty in the Ducati camp, for instance. Nevertheless, let’s have a look.

Those two DNFs obviously stand out, but only Qatar was his fault. It’s also worth comparing that error in the first round to his performance at a wet Le Mans, where he kept it upright when the likes of Valentino Rossi didn’t.

The trend – if you can call it that – against the other prototypes suggests that Smith has started to get on terms with the Ducati riders, notably beating the lot of them at the Dutch TT. Overtaking Andrea Dovizioso – even on a Ducati – is no mean feat, and he’s beaten him in his last three finishes.

On the other hand, Smith has been beaten by a CRT bike four times in seven finishes, which doesn’t sound great. But every time that was Aleix Espargaro, for whom no-one seems to have anything other than utter admiration this year. Get that man on a prototype.

Looking at Smith’s preferred measure of success, he’s clearly been getting closer to the front – down to under 30 seconds behind the winner in Germany. And his finishing position is going in the right direction, even it is a bit of a blunt measure.

So it’s hard to argue that he deserves to be booted out of MotoGP. But is he more deserving of a ride than current Moto2 frontrunners like Scott Redding and Pol Espargaro? That’s another question altogether.

Photo Credit: Barron Fujimoto – Flickr – Some rights reserved