Yeah, I tend to rather overreact to any tiny intimations that there's any sort of possible chance that the number of barrel rolls may be increased... Sorry about that.

Regarding there being nothing to do while mid-air, that was the beauty of the older, barrel-roll-less games. It was a sudden break from the track madness, and it challenged you to maintain your focus on the controls as you floated along, gazing down at the track and scenery.

Anyway, hopefully the fact that barrel rolls now cost more energy will solve a lot of the barrel roll problems at least in race modes.

Personally I get the feeling that we will never, ever have anything like the classic physics again while barrel rolls remain in the game, since there'd be way to much rollie-pollie-ollie going on.