If MotoGP riders didn’t push the limits and each other so hard, “if we don’t go to this level – it would be like Formula 1.” So said Marquez in Australia, after a bruising and frankly scary front battle, with eight riders up close and personal, and any number of collisions.

Suzuki rider Andrea Iannone, one of the protagonists, thinks MotoGP is already too much like Formula 1, however.

He gave this opinion to Italian journalists, reported the Italian web-site GPOne.com; suggesting that the bikes are now more important than the riders. And it wasn’t just a veiled critique of his Suzuki. “If the bike doesn’t work,” he said, “there is not much you can do. “Look at the Yamahas, for example.”

Their qualifying performance bore him out, with Vinales not even making it into the top dozen in Q2; telling the press it was not the tyres, but the bike, that was making it impossible for him to enter corners fast enough to be competitive.

Rossi, Zarco, Vinales, Australian MotoGP 2017