Wet weather always turns things upside down in MotoGP, and while it might not have rained for long during Sunday’s San Marino Grand Prix, it was enough to potentially strike a decisive title blow against championship leader Jorge Martin.
You won’t be surprised to spot that he’s quite a way down this week’s rider rankings as a result of his dumb pit decision.
And with reigning champion Pecco Bagnaia launching himself right back into the title fight with a strong second place, Marc Marquez continuing his return to winning ways and conditions that gave some the chance to shine and left others in the gravel, we have lots of metrics to judge the riders on.
Scoring the grid in order based on their performances not just in the main event but also Saturday’s sprint race, it’s obviously all subjective – but comes not just from their final race result but takes into account things like the machinery they’re on and the pre-race expectations.
1 Pecco Bagnaia
Started: 1st Sprint: 2nd Finished: 2nd
It would have been oh-so-easy for everything to go wrong for Bagnaia at Misano – carrying injuries into the weekend, significantly down in the title fight and with rain looming.
It’s a credit to him that he held it all together and somehow managed to come out of it smiling, with Martin now very much back within his reach.
Bagnaia held his cool and stuck to his strategy when the rain came on Sunday, capitalising on Martin’s own error of judgement and emerging in a much more comfortable position than the one he’d been in just hours before.
2 Marc Marquez
Started: 9th Sprint: 5th Finished: 1st
First of all, let’s establish the reality: yes, Marc Marquez has won two grands prix in a row, but it doesn’t mean that he’s quite yet back to his old-style winning ways.
Sunday’s win came, like the previous one at Aragon, because of circumstance, with Bagnaia clearly willing to let him go in damp conditions.
However, that detracts nothing from Marquez’s consummate skill, and doesn’t change the fact that he’s the one who got to stand on the top step of the podium, having turned around what looked like something of a lost weekend when he crashed in qualifying.
3 Enea Bastianini
Started: 8th Sprint: 4th Finished: 3rd
Third place in the main event feels like the maximum that was on offer for Enea Bastianini, given that he didn’t quite have the pace of Bagnaia and Martin all weekend, nor the sublime skills of Marc Marquez in the wet.
Bad qualifying left him with a lot of work to do, but he managed to do the usual Bestia trick of recovering well to a pair of results that definitely shouldn’t leave him too unhappy.
4 Fabio Quartararo
Started: 10th Sprint: 9th Finished: 7th
If ever there’s been a sign that not everything at Yamaha is doom and gloom right now, it should be Fabio Quartararo’s weekend performance at Misano.
Sure, it came not long after a private test at the circuit, but nonetheless he put on a solid reminder of how good he is by only just missing out on what would have been his first top six in nearly a year.
It’s not a big step, more of a gentle upwards curve, but it’s very much moving in the right direction for him and the team now, and there’s plenty more to come.
5 Brad Binder
Started: 6th Sprint: 7th Finished: 4th
One of those Brad Binder weekends where he doesn’t make much in the way of waves – but somehow ends up the best KTM by a long margin and within touching distance of the podium fight.
Still the master of consistency, maybe more would have been expected of him when the rain came on Sunday, but – as his competitiveness dropped once the track dried – he still managed to hold on to a good position.
6 Marco Bezzecchi
Started: 3rd Sprint: DNF Finished: 5th
Life hasn’t been easy of late for Marco Bezzecchi, and the Italian clearly needed a solid weekend at his home race to perform something of a reset.
His DNF in the sprint might not have helped with that, but the rest of the weekend certainly did, with an impressive front row start and a solid-if-not-amazing finish in the main event on Sunday that acts as a nice reminder that when things go right, Bezzecchi can still deliver.
7 Franco Morbidelli
Started: 2nd Sprint: 3rd Finished: DNF
Highs and lows, quite literally, for Franco Morbidelli at his home race – with a very strong run of podium pace and his best result in a very long time in the sprint before it all came crashing down on Sunday.
He was unlucky to be one of the lead group when the rain came and therefore forced to set pace for those behind.
It’s a shame his crash meant that we didn’t get to see what Morbidelli was really capable of against the advances of Bastianini later in the race, but it’s nonetheless a weekend he can build on in a season that effectively started late.
8 Fabio Di Giannantonio
Started: 14th Sprint: DNF Finished: 9th
Given the state that Fabio Di Giannantonio turned up to Misano in as he continues to deal with the aftermath of his Austria fall, a decent top-10 finish in tricky conditions at a physically-demanding circuit is nothing at all to be disappointed by.
Potentially requiring surgery to properly repair his shoulder, he’s clearly limited by the injury, so taking that into account it’s fair to say that he’s riding well.
9 Alex Marquez
Started: 7th Sprint: 10th Finished: 6th
It feels like Alex Marquez left something on the table at the weekend. He definitely had plenty of pace, but wasn’t able to keep enough life in his tyres towards the end of the main event, something that we saw last weekend at Aragon as well (albeit with different results for him and Bagnaia).
Nonetheless, a top six is nothing to turn up your nose at, and he should still be pretty pleased with his Misano results.
10 Johann Zarco
Started: 16th Sprint: 13th Finished: 12th
Being top Honda is, of course, easier when the two factory riders don’t make the start of the race due to illness.
But even had Joan Mir and Luca Marini been on the grid, there’s every chance that Johann Zarco’s strong weekend would still have topped the ‘Honda Cup’.
Fast all weekend (relatively speaking) and consistent even when things got a bit tricky on Sunday, it’s another strong finish to add to his 2024 palmeres.
11 Jack Miller
Started: 12th Sprint: 8th Finished: 8th
A pretty standard-issue Jack Miller weekend, even with the damp conditions.
Decent in qualifying and strong early on in both races, he was able to shine for a few minutes when the rain came along.
But as it dried Sunday’s main event quickly devolved into a normal weekend for the Australian, using up his tyres a tad faster than those around him and dropping back into a pretty average position at the flag.
12 Pedro Acosta
Started: 5th Sprint: 6th Finished: 17th
Given the bursts of form we saw from Pedro Acosta throughout the weekend, it’s a surprise that he didn’t end up top KTM – but also an important reminder that despite this season’s high points he is still very much a rookie, which explains the mistake in Sunday’s race that denied him a chance to be much higher up the standings than he was.
13 Taka Nakagami
Started: 22nd Sprint: 20th Finished: 13th
Nothing too amazing from Taka Nakagami except that he managed to end up not too far away from his LCR team-mate Zarco and to continue what has been decent form of late.
Yes, there were two Hondas fewer in the race, but that shouldn’t detract from the fact that there’s been a decent uptick in Nakagami’s form in recent weeks – around the time that the pressure of 2025 uncertainty has been lifted now his plans are sorted.
14 Miguel Oliveira
Started: 18th Sprint: 15th Finished: 11th
If ever there was a tough weekend to be an Aprilia rider, it was Misano, with seemingly no explanation why the bikes simply couldn’t perform at a track that should in theory suit them.
Considering that, the best that Miguel Oliveira can take away from the weekend is that at least he was the fastest of a bad bunch, and the only one of the quartet to finish both races inside the top 15.
However, given the bike’s performance issues, even the sort of conditions he normally relishes wasn’t enough to help him break into the top 10.
15 Pol Espargaro
Started: 15th Sprint: 14th Finished: 10th
After a few impressive wildcard performances earlier this season, Misano was something of a return to normality for KTM test rider Pol Espargaro, who definitely didn’t have a bad weekend but very much slotted into where you’d expect to find a part-timer in a cameo test appearance.
Still very fast, it wasn’t quite podium pace but he will have left his bosses more than happy with the work done and the data gathered on a 2025-spec RC16.
16 Maverick Vinales
Started: 11th Sprint: 11th Finished: 16th
A tough weekend all round for Aprilia, but there’s also got to be a bit of frustration at Maverick Vinales’ results given that he made the same tactical mistake as Martin and paid dearly for it.
More was on offer than 16th.
17 Stefan Bradl
Started: 23rd Sprint: DNF Finished: 14th
Just Stefan Bradl doing Stefan Bradl things, made all the more important by the absence of both Marini and Mir on Sunday thanks to illness.
Remarkably, the test rider’s five appearances this year means he now has more championship points than full-time works man Marini, a sign that he’s doing something right as Honda tries to fix its problems.
18 Aleix Espargaro
Started: 13th Sprint: 12th Finished: DNF
Aforementioned Aprilia problems aside, the fact that Aleix Espargaro failed to see the chequered flag on Sunday significantly detracts from what would have otherwise already been a pretty poor weekend for him.
Never really looking to have much in the way of speed or pace (like the other Aprilias), it’s just one to forget.
19 Augusto Fernandez
Started: 17th Sprint: 16th Finished: DNF
It’s a shame that good luck seems to have deserted Augusto Fernandez this year, because there was certainly more than he achieved available at Misano.
Back to his 2023 form of being able to make things happen in longer races rather than qualifying or sprints, it looked like Sunday would be another example – until the brief shower of rain that upset so many peoples’ races left him ruing what could have been in the gravel.
20 Jorge Martin
Started: 4th Sprint: 1st Finished: 15th
Flag-to-flag races are, of course, notoriously tricky things to get right.
But there’s one fairly straightforward rule if you’re fighting for a title: follow your championship rival, and try to do what they do.
That’s what makes Martin’s bizarre decision to pit for wet tyres on a track not wet enough for them a disaster.
It cost him an awful lot of championship points, simply because (it seems) the team didn’t make a good enough plan in advance.
Lessons to be learned from this one for Pramac and for Martin.
21 Raul Fernandez
Started: 19th Sprint: 17th Finished: 18th
It’s very difficult to find anything at all positive to say about Raul Fernandez’s weekend at Misano.
Consistently the most in trouble of an in-trouble quartet of Aprilia racers, he never even hinted at having a sniff at the points, and his unnecessary double pitstop in Sunday’s race was the mouldy cherry on top of a weekend to forget.
22 Alex Rins
Started: 20th Sprint: 19th Finished: 19th
Yes, Alex Rins still isn’t fully fit. And yes, he made the wrong decision and pitted for wet tyres when he shouldn’t have.
But the reality is that when your team-mate is taking a difficult bike into the top 10, you need to be a little bit closer than 10 places back.
A tough weekend for Rins, but something of a warning as well.
