I enjoy the barrel roll mechanic in Pure but worry about the extent of its use in Pulse. As other have said, at high speed classes good players can do it so many times, that only a smallish number of vehicles become viable for high-level competition.

Anything that shoehorns players into a small subset of vehicles is bad for racing games.

A larger issue is that it could irritate casual gamers much like "snaking" did in Mario Kart DS. Snaking and barrel rolls are pretty analagous, each requiring skill and obviously building on an intended game mechanic, but, taken to the maximum, end up dominating the gameplay.

I really think that average gamers would be PISSED to see experienced players barrel rolling past them during the first lap of every race.