The call the greatest MotoGP riders ‘aliens’ for reasons we don’t need to explain here but in Marc Marquez, we have a Roswell special of an alternative lifeform based on what he can do with a motorbike.

Little fazes the Spaniard it seems, not least tipping his Repsol Honda MotoGP bike into a corner at full lean angle, a maximum benchmark that he just keeps improving incrementally like a pole vaulter nudging the bar up a centimetre at a time.