"I'm a little tired of watching Italians, Spanish and Japanese riders get the breaks. I like to hear the American National Anthem, that's what turns me on. When I hear it, it is still makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up."

So says King Kenny Roberts, Grand Prix world champion, team owner and occasional new rider talent coordinator. Along with all of his 2007 responsibilities (he still heads the Honda team that bears his name and is chief counsel to his namesake son who races for Team Roberts) he'll add another duty to his business card—that of managing the racing career of sixteen-year-old dirt track racer Steve Bonsey. The American teenager will race a KTM 125 in the '07 125 world championship.

The rise of Dani Pedrosa in Grand Prix by way of Alberto Puig's tutoring cannot be ignored, especially considering that as a rider, Puig, frankly, wasn't much. And Puig isn't looking for an American rider as his next project.

While not a well-known name to many roadracing enthusiasts, Bonsey is a bright young talent on the American dirt track front. He has an amazing career ahead of him as a dirt tracker but Bonsey and his supporters assuredly know that the path to glory gets less bumpy and greasy as a dirt tracker progresses—because he'll need to go roadracing if he truly wants to follow in the wheel tracks of the aforementioned Roberts, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Rainey and current world MotoGP champion Nicky Hayden.

Insiders have known for the past year that Roberts has had an American rider as his pet project ad that he was keeping it all close to his vest. He'd quietly been trying to find a support deal for the youngster here in the US but, in the end, Roberts and "young Stevie's" family decided he'd be better off jumping in with both feet and racing 125 GP this season in Europe. Even though his roadracing experience is limited...really limited.

"He's a really good dirt tracker," Roberts said last week. "It was suggested to me that he needed to step up his game a little bit by an old friend of mine (Ray Abrams of A&A Motors in Redwood City). One thing after another happened and I decided to jump in and basically manage the kid." This is not new ground for Roberts. He mentored dirt-tracker John Kocinski into a 250 world champion by 1990.

Roberts has spent a limited amount of time watching "young Stevie" actually ride, but the little that he has seen has really resonated with him. "I watched him at Lodi (Cycle Bowl), and I was very impressed," Roberts says.

"Everything they put him on, he just adapts and goes fast. Hopefully, he has a long career."

The King is going to help "young Stevie" as much as possible during the season with hands-on advice. But one gets the impression that, with Roberts, this project is a little more big-picture and personal than just helping a local kid with a great deal of potential.

I've found that one way to gauge how passionate Roberts is about a subject is to see if he'll let you get a word in edge-wise when he discusses it. Ask Roberts about the ascension of European riders in MotoGP while US riders seem doomed to Superbike, and he'll talk right over any question or counterpoint you offer. The rise of Dani Pedrosa in Grand Prix by way of Alberto Puig's tutoring cannot be ignored, especially considering that as a rider, Puig, frankly, wasn't much. And Puig isn't looking for an American rider as his next project.

The machine churning out Pedrosa-bots is now nearing full steam. The 250 and 125 classes are bulging with riders itching to some day take Pedrosa's glory away from him in the same way that Pedrosa lays awake at night wanting to peel the skin from Valentino Rossi. Where are Americans in this? It's a common perception that 250 riders rule the world, one disproven by MotoGP world champ Nick Hayden, but future American MotoGP champs may be as rare as hen's teeth, given the way MotoGP bikes have evolved and how many Euro riders are waiting in the wings.

"You look at that and you just go, 'Jesus, in ten years they're going to be producing twenty of those riders that are just awesome,'" says Roberts of the monolith of Euro riders now working as understudies who will one day be featured players in MotoGP. "I for one don't want to see that. I'm just not ready for that. I'd like for an American to have a chance."

Roberts spent some time this past season researching what it would cost to put Bonsey on a competitive 600 here in the US. What made him recommend that Bonsey go to Grand Prix as soon as possible is the fact that there's no class in the US that prepares a rider for MotoGP like racing European 125/250 does. As a rider he'd be racing on the same tracks and using basically the same racing lines on a 125/250 as he would on an 800cc MotoGP bike. It's very doubtful that running 30-minute practices on a 600 at Barber is going to do much to prepare a young American to race MotoGP in 2009.

"That's where Pedrosa comes from," Roberts explains of the Euro farm-system for riders. "And what's that other kid's name that does pretty good? Valentino something? It all really started with Biaggi in a way—they have come up through 125 racing. They just kind of hand-pick these kids and run them through the system. The trouble with America, as I see it, is we don't have anything like that here. A lot of times, American kids just get stuck here."

Next factor? John Hopkins.

Hopkins left the US to race Grand Prix at a time when almost no one recommended that he do so. Grand Prix was changing from 500s to MotoGP and most expected that he'd be back Stateside in a year or so, healing up and hoping to land a Superbike ride.

The reality is that European GP team managers don't think much of American riders, partially because they don't see them race with their own eyes. They need to see a rider in order for him to be considered. Hopkins, to his credit, did a very credible job in his first seasons of Grand Prix, accomplishing two things: he didn't make many big mistakes and he was actually there. Pundits will forever debate which of those two factors were crucial in Hopkins being hired onto the Suzuki MotoGP team, but the fact that he was there, racing GP when slots came open, was undeniably important. Hence, having "young Stevie" there in Europe, sitting in hospitality when the subject of potential MotoGP riders comes up, can't hurt.

For Roberts, it's not even worth debating whether a rider should stay in the US and mature into something capable of racing MotoGP like Nick Hayden did.

"The factories have concluded that they get their MotoGP riders from 125 and 250 or from MotoGP itself rather than anywhere else," he says.