Just four points covered the top four in the championship coming to the eighth round of the 2020 MotoGP world championship at Catalunya. And after the Catalan Grand Prix, that gap has doubled to cover the top two in the standings.
With each passing round as this whirlwind season enters its home stretch, it's looking increasingly likely that the championship will be debated between the two riders in their second years in the premier class.
Fabio Quartararo stormed to victory last Sunday to brush away the difficult run of races between the Czech and the Emilia Romagna Grands Prix in which he failed to score a podium (though he was third in the second Misano race before a post-race time penalty for a track limits violation dropped him to fourth). Having scored a maximum of 50 points from his victories at the Jerez double-header which started the season, the Petronas SRT rider only managed 33 in the five races which followed.