When Travis was with Brent, there was alot of foreplay and passion on both of their parts. But with Derek, it's always a "sprint" rather than a marathon. He moves so fast in every damn video he does, I can't get into the moment. And that's to bad for Travis, because he's so good looking and would like to see his face and reaction as to what is happening during the video, it's over before it seems to even have started.
While I agree that the Travis/Derek scene wasn't as good as the Travis/Brent scene, I think you're being a little unfair to Derek. The scene with Brent was Travis' first scene as a top, and other than the actual fucking part, Brent was very much in control of the action. With the Derek scene, Travis was clearly trying much harder to direct the action than he was in the Brent scene. And as a result, his inexperience and current limits worked against him and the scene in general. Derek was just getting started with his usual repertoire of foreplay when suddenly Travis flipped him on his back to start his version of foreplay. Once you get past some kissing and a very basic blowjob, Travis' bag of foreplay tricks is pretty much empty. About 1 minute after Travis took over the scene, he was reaching for a condom. So much for any further foreplay.
You stated that with Derek, "it's always a 'sprint' rather than a marathon". That isn't my impression, and I think the best example is the "Derek fucks Jared" scene. Derek wasn't moving fast at all in that scene. It was a 25 minute scene that started out with about a minute and a half of banter. After that, there was foreplay (all Derek... Jared was just the recipient) until 17 1/2 minutes into the video. During that 16 minutes, Derek played Jared's body like a fine instrument. Lots of intense kissing, body worship, cock and ball sucking, foot worship, rimming and assplay. IMO, this is one of the hottest scenes ever on CF... by comparison, both of the "Travis fucks..." scenes were like watching a televised chess tournament.
At any rate, I think that the problems with the Travis/Derek scene were much more Travis' doing than Derek's. Whether he decided himself that he should be in charge or he was told to by Corbin, he wasn't ready for it. At this point, Travis reminds me alot of early TJ... both are very good looking with trim, tight bodies, and Travis is just as stiff as TJ was when he was new. TJ has developed into an adequate performer, though he'll never hold a candle to CF's best. Time will tell if Travis does any better.
In the meantime, my recommendation to CF is to never again squander Derek's talents by putting him in such a passive role in a scene with a newbie. He's got sex appeal and sexual energy to burn, and it's a crime to bottle that up in a scene.