The 2012 silly season isn’t over, but it is mostly concentrated on how many CRTs there will be and who will be riding what, even if we already know several names like Colin Edwards with MGN Forward, James Ellison with Paul Bird (but that team hasn’t been confirmed yet) Anthony West with Speed Master and Danilo Petrucci with Ioda Racing, but veteran rider Randy de Puniet is still looking for a ride and rumors of where he is going are rampant.
After Italian sources had him as a Ducati test rider (which would be pretty useless now that the testing rules have been relaxed) or on call as a replacement rider (which is a good idea and it worked out well for Rizla Suzuki who had John Hopkins), the latest rumor has the French rider testing the Aprilia RSV4 yesterday at Valencia (image here) with Alex Hofmann and he’s now linked to ride for Aspar Martinez’ CRT team and it seems that despite previous comments saying he’d rather stay home, he has finally realized that a CRT bike is his only viable option if he really wants to race next season.
