Francesco Bagnaia believes MotoGP is 'moving in a direction to how it used to be in the ‘alien’ era when the likes o𝄹f 🐠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 m🥂ost 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 inꦿ Japan, with the top four covered by 🐻4.3s, while fifth-placed Franco Morbidelli was over 13s further back.

Bagnaia believes this is beginninꦺg to look like the ‘alien’ era of the latter 2000s and early 2010s, when the likes of Rossi, Lorenzo, Pedrosa, Casey 𓄧Stoner, 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 podiu🦂m talking about the championship battle with Martin.

“It’s going to be like this now,” he said. “Jorge should let me clos🐲e 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 toꦍ manage to catch back and to overtak🎐e him.

“But I think it could be a good situation to arrive in Valencia wiꦜth 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 wheꦓre it’s very easy to make mis💎takes, to crash.

“W🐼e are on the limit always and we are playing around 10, fiꦫve, eight points each weekend.

“So, it’s quite tricky, it’s quite tough. I think years ago it was like this because years ago ܫwhen you were w🌸atching 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 th﷽at 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.”