#and if martin/bagnaia dropped a lorenzo/rossi donington 2009 they'd be sent to the firing squad by next dawn

[batsplat]

sorry if you’ve answered this before, but do you count Marc as an alien? I’ve seen some people do it on Reddit & I fully get why, but personally I kinda feel like only the og 4 can count??? I find myself saying “the aliens AND Marc” but then I’m wondering if I’m just being dumb about the semantics of it lol. Do you know if ppl more broadly in the sport (commentators, other riders, etc) count Marc as an alien? (god I swear this sport makes me type out the dumbest sentences I’ve ever written in my life lol)

I'm not massively fussed about this either way, though I personally do include marc as an alien because it's just a useful shorthand for those five riders. the term for those 'og 4' that gets bandied about is 'the fantastic four'... I cannot tell you why, but personally I just cannot bring myself to call them That. (though I've also seen the term being used for the top four in this year's championship, which I fw even less.) I talked about how I use the term in this post, where my main point was that to me the term primarily is about an era. there was a specific time span in motogp history where the championship was completely dominated by a small group of riders, partly because they were just very good and partly because they had a substantial machinery advantage over everyone else. in any given year from 2007 to 2015, you could safely predict that every single race would be won by one of four riders. the only exceptions to this are le mans 2007 (vermeulen on a factory suzuki), motegi 2007 (capirossi on a factory ducati), donington 2009 (dovizioso on a factory honda), and assen 2011 (spies on a factory yamaha). all of these races were conducted in the wet too... in the dry, it's complete domination

which, again. this is partly about the machinery, like this was just an era with way more substantial a factory/satellite divide than you'd get today (or indeed in the 990cc era). you never know what would've happened if more riders had that quality of machinery - though obviously it's worth pointing out that dovi in three years at repsol honda secured a single race win to dani's nine. (and casey got ten in 2011 alone, when all three of them were teammates.) still, it's at its most useful to me to describe them as like. a group. as a dynamic that consistently played out in competition across a set number of years. which to me marc is a part of. basically this:

because marc took over casey's role in ensuring that dynamic SO completely, I think it makes sense to include him in that group. the dynamic is essentially the same, right? until change in tech regulations, control electronics and michelin tyres and all the rest of it, as well as gradual competitive decline of the 'og aliens' and shift of the competitive balance between yamaha and ducati from 2016 onwards signals the end of the alien era. the aliens describe a cohort more than riders of a certain talent level (which is fine by me since I am not a fan of discussions of talent). but valentino has roughly the same age gap to dani as marc has to jorge, so... might as well expand it to those five

as for what the wider motogp world says, yeah, I do think they're mostly on board with calling marc an alien. again, I think when people are trying to talk only about the non-marc aliens, they tend to use the term 'fantastic four'. I do not use this term and generally just rely on context to make it clear who I'm talking about. but also if you prefer to not use the term to include marc, y'know, fair enough - the term wasn't originally used to apply to him. the difference is whether you're talking about a group of competitors elevated from the rest in 2007 to 2012, or 2007 to 2015. in practical terms, to me there isn't a massive difference between the competitive dynamics when casey was on the grid versus when marc was on the grid, so. that's where I come down on this