Is MotoGP heading back into the ‘alien’ era?

Francesco Bagnaia believes MotoGP is 'moving in a direction to how it used to be in the ‘alien’ era when the likes of Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo and Dani Pedrosa dominated.

The 2024 title fight remains incredibly tight between Jorge Martin and Bagnaia, with just 10 points splitting them after last weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix.

While MotoGP is living through arguably its most competitive era, for much of this season there has been a clear step made between the top four of Martin, Bagnaia, Marc Marquez and Enea Bastianini, and the rest of the field.

This was evident in Japan, with the top four covered by 4.3s, while fifth-placed Franco Morbidelli was over 13s further back.

Bagnaia believes this is beginning to look like the ‘alien’ era of the latter 2000s and early 2010s, when the likes of Rossi, Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Casey Stoner, and then latterly Marc Marquez, annexed the front of the field.

After winning the Japanese GP, Bagnaia was captured in the cooldown room before the podium talking about the championship battle with Martin.

“It’s going to be like this now,” he said. “Jorge should let me close the gap to zero and we head to Valencia with no gap.”

“Fine by me,” Martin replied.

When asked to expand on this in the press conference, Bagnaia said: “I will try to manage to catch back and to overtake him.

“But I think it could be a good situation to arrive in Valencia with the same points, and whoever wins is the champion.

“It’s something that has not happened for many seasons.

“It could be different, but we are in a situation where it’s very easy to make mistakes, to crash.

“We are on the limit always and we are playing around 10, five, eight points each weekend.

“So, it’s quite tricky, it’s quite tough. I think years ago it was like this because years ago when you were watching racing in 2011, 2010, 2012, 2013, Marc, Vale, Lorenzo, Pedrosa were always in the top before, or before with Casey.

“And I think the championship is moving in that direction now, because the ones who are stronger are always in the top and from the first three, four races from the start of the championship we started to see me and Jorge were always at the top.

“Then Marc closed the gap, Enea closed the gap. So, we are always us in the top four positions. And if you look also to the gap today, we made the difference again.”