The concept of the ‘aliens’ is well established in the MotoGP class – the riders the rest of the pack simply can’t match. It was Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Casey Stoner and Dani Pedrosa last season. You might include Andrea Dovizioso now too.

Moto2 is far too even to see anything similar, but it looks like aliens might have started to land in 125cc. It wasn’t perhaps so clear over the first three races of the year, when Efren Vazquez and Esteve Rabat were muddying the waters by picking up the odd podium, but the last four races have clarified matters.

The alien leader is undoubtedly Marc Marquez, who has won all four of those races. The lesser aliens, who have been fighting over the three places behind him at each of those races, are Pol Espargaro, Nicolas Terol and the only non-Spaniard, Britain’s very own Bradley Smith.

At the fourth race of the season, in Italy, just 0.161 seconds covered the four of them, with 10 seconds back to 5th place. It wasn’t quite as close at Silverstone, with 17 seconds covering the top four, but 5th place 36 seconds down on the winner. It was 10 seconds back to 4th in Assen, and 37 seconds to 5th. Terol messed it up a bit in Catalunya yesterday by crashing out, but there were only 5 seconds covering the remaining potential aliens, with 4th place 40 seconds down the road.

The rest of the season will tell whether they are truly aliens, but you wouldn’t bet against one of them winning the championship, as it stands. And Smith is probably an outside chance, after his troubled start to the season. In fact, given his current form, it would be brave to back anyone but Marquez.