There was just one rider threatening Ducati’s MotoGP dominance during this weekend’s San Marino Grand Prix – and he is duly rewarded with the number one spot in this weekend’s rankings, even if the grand prix win itself eluded him.
Agree, disagree or just want to send Val off on a wild tangent? Put your thoughts on his rankings in the comments on this Patreon post and he’ll reply in his debrief video
Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 2nd
You’ve got to love a race weekend – if you’re me, anyway – that leaves no doubt as to who should be ranked first at the end of it.
Marco Bezzecchi was not perfect – the final half-second gap to Marc Marquez on Sunday paired with his Quercia error suggests the grand prix was winnable, and normally he would’ve suffered a similar defeat in the sprint.
But Bezzecchi clearly generated the most surplus value, in terms of performance and points, than any other rider gave any of the manufacturers.
Only one non-Desmosedici finished within 17 seconds of the winner on Sunday, and it was Bezzecchi’s Aprilia right on Marquez’s tail. This is not a performance to nitpick.
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: 3rd
Alex Marquez regretted being too tentative at the start of the sprint, as he “read the situation in the wrong way” and was preoccupied by ensuring his ride height device disengaged.
If anything was left on the table, it was there. Otherwise, this was smooth-as-silk, with podiums in both races as he chased Bezzecchi on Saturday, then rightly heeded some bike warnings on Sunday to accept finishing a distant third.
He now looks out of reach in the battle for second in the championship.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: DNF
Pedro Acosta made a right mess out of qualifying in chasing after Marc Marquez and clearly going over the limit – in what can only be seen as a miscalculation in terms of optimising his grid position.
He was otherwise the only KTM rider making things happen all weekend, despite a lack of good feeling on the bike through Friday and Saturday.
The chain coming off in the grand prix as he settled into a comfortable fourth (and even dreamed of going after Alex Marquez for third) was brutal – and embarrassing for KTM given it had happened to Brad Binder twice earlier in the weekend.
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 1st
A “typical Misano crash” out of the lead in the sprint, paired with some very mild qualifying underperformance, keeps Marquez out of the top three this week.
He was his customary superb self in the main event, showcasing – as he had in the sprint – that uncanny ability to perfectly navigate the first few corners, then outduelling Bezzecchi to set up his ‘Leo Messi at the Bernabeu’ celebration.
Messi’s Barcelona actually didn’t win the Spanish league title that season. No such concern here.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 7th
This was another weekend of Luca Marini leading the line for Honda, though this time practice promised even more than a pair of seventh places – which Marini admitted it’s “incredible” to feel disappointed by given how far back Honda had been not that long ago.
The start was the issue in both races – he got a particularly terrible wheelie off the line on Sunday and was lucky the run to Turn 1 isn’t very long.
He felt he had top-five or even top-four pace in the grand prix, but just could not run the laptimes he felt capable of in Fermin Aldeguer’s wheeltracks.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 5th
Fabio Di Giannantonio felt his usual performance pattern was at play at Misano – not too great on new tyres, strong on used tyres, even if the tyres weren’t getting too used at the Italian circuit.
He held on over VR46 team-mate Franco Morbidelli for a sprint podium despite giving him half a chance with a minor error, then really needed to make an opening-lap move on Morbidelli stick on Sunday – but didn’t quite and didn’t quite have the early-race pace to try again, even if the closing laps were strong as usual.
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: 4th
On an “orange card” from the stewards after his Barcelona sprint error, Morbidelli was squeaky clean here but also plenty fast.
Behind his team-mate in the sprint and ahead of him in the main race (and qualifying), he is only ranked behind because I do believe his older-spec bike is still better than Di Giannantonio’s GP25.
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: 6th
Fermin Aldeguer admitted he would’ve “for sure” signed up for a pair of sixth-place finishes on Friday, when he found the transition from no-grip Barcelona to all-grip Misano really unintuitive.
A big set-up change righted the ship on Saturday, with Aldeguer doing a reasonable job in Q2 to be just half a second off pole, then bringing his A-game in terms of race pace.
He admitted after Sunday he had decided discretion was the better part of valour – arriving to the back of Di Giannantonio but spiking his front tyre pressure and temperature and choosing to settle for sixth, which is a welcome approach in what has been a fairly error-strewn rookie season.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 8th
After a “really bad” time attack on Friday, Fabio Quartararo’s Q1-to-Q2 run was maybe the single greatest qualifying effort of the season – even if the final lap, by his own admission, wasn’t perfect, the laptime progression was shocking given how meek the bike had looked in others’ hands.
Neither race lived up to that. He crashed out from a solid position on Saturday, blaming a “strange feeling” and vibrations on the rear (a not-so-subtle hint as to what he viewed as the culprit).
The grand prix was likewise promising early on, but Quartararo ran out of both tyre life and arm strength trying to stay in the mix – so eventually accepted his lot and trundled home in eighth.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 9th
Miguel Oliveira has more than doubled his 2025 points tally since the announcement he was out of the Yamaha MotoGP programme at the end of the year. Asked whether the timing of his form burst was frustrating, he cheekily said: “Frustrating for me? You think so?”
He wasn’t exactly a clear second-best Yamaha rider this weekend – Friday was rough with an electrical problem, and the sprint was undone in the opening laps – but he ran a good qualifying and a very strong grand prix, finishing just 0.6s back from Quartararo, having clearly played the race more smartly.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 13th
Jorge Martin was helped into the top 10 on Friday by a helpful Bezzecchi tow, but couldn’t do much with the Q2 spot, struggling with the wrong anti-wheelie setting.
He felt he could’ve been on the second row or close otherwise, and felt he had top five pace – but was only eighth in the sprint and didn’t get a proper shot on Sunday.
With his sighting-lap bike failure – and Martin arriving back to the pits just too late to avoid a start procedure breach despite the best efforts of the marshal giving him a ride – the 2024 champion says he would’ve preferred to start from the back, but instead had to serve two long-lap penalties.
This made the race into an extended test session.
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 11th
Raul Fernandez’s bid to make Q2 on Friday fell apart through first a bike issue and then a crash, the latter having long-term impacts on his weekend.
He struggled with soreness in qualifying so didn’t find the Q2-worthy lap he felt he had in him, then spent both races riding behind riders he felt he was considerably faster than.
The fact he couldn’t make much progress was, per Fernandez, a reflection of Aprilia sharing some of that Yamaha “character” – in being unable to exploit corner speed in the pack.
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 10th
This is a very difficult Binder weekend to gauge – in his own words, team-mate Acosta was “clearly much stronger” than his KTM peers this weekend, but in Binder’s case specifically KTM just flatly did not put him in a position to succeed.
His RC16 lost the chain in crucial single-lap contests on Friday and Saturday, then had some sort of engine braking malfunction in the sprint.
He got what he could out of the race, for once making up little ground in the early going and then generally just hanging on, hampered by what he described as a major difference between front grip (not good) and rear grip (good) and eventually hamstrung by chatter.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: DNF
Ai Ogura found the adaptation to Misano on a MotoGP bike less intuitive than at some of the other tracks, struggling to get his head around the twisty final sector in particular.
But he seemed to largely get it right for Saturday, with 12th in the sprint maybe even underselling his race pace a little, before an unseen crash in the grand prix – somewhere between Curvone and Turn 12, though the exact dynamics remain unclear – snuffed out any further progress.
Ogura complained of wrist discomfort after the fact but has been thankfully cleared of any major injuries. It sounds like it was a fast crash – so he’ll need to take care in protecting his confidence.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 11th Grand Prix: 16th
Running out of spec with the works Hondas and unable to compensate for it like he did at Barcelona, LCR’s Johann Zarco had injury added to insult when one of those works Hondas crashed into him and hit him in the hand on Sunday (though thankfully it didn’t sound like any lasting damage was done).
After finding some stability on the bike, he was very close to sneaking into Q2 on Friday, which would’ve been weekend-changing – but then suffered with vibration in Q1 and could only get so much out of the sprint.
He rode around a lap down with a damaged bike in the hope of a Sunday point, but was just short of the requisite attrition.
Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 12th
Jack Miller pays a decently-sized penalty in these rankings for shunting right before qualifying – he himself admitted he kind of “ballsed it up”, and the consequence was a very poor Q1 on a spare bike with a different setting.
He recovered OK in both races, in large part by staying out of trouble but equally without making much of an impression.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: DNF
Still physically-limited and not sleeping well – and a “passenger” in some parts of the track – Maverick Vinales was at Misano to make laps and rebuild his muscle.
He wasn’t particularly competitive (apart from maybe Friday afternoon and maybe the sprint), and crashed out on Sunday seemingly due to carrying too much lean angle onto the kerb – but for now this is all just testing.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: DNF
This was a difficult weekend for Enea Bastianini (and new crew chief Xavi Palacin, who replaced Alberto Giribuola at Barcelona) – though it looked like more of a KTM thing than Bastianini reverting to early-2025 form.
He found the RC16 “nervous” and unpredictable in the fast corners of sector three in particular, and struggled with the wheelie out of Tramonto – but should’ve still qualified much better if not for a crash on his second outlap.
The sprint was pretty good, the grand prix shaping up to be pretty good also after a strong start – but he arrived off his line at Turn 14 and crashed.
Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: 14th
The face of the Yamaha V4 project right now, Augusto Fernandez found a competitive but capricious bike at Misano. On Friday, it was good enough to place him six tenths of a second off Quartararo – on Sunday, he was a minute off the winner.
Fernandez’s weekend as a rider is almost impossible to assess in that context, especially as he was met on Sunday by a malfunctioning dashboard and was managing fuel for more than half the distance.
He deserves no shortage of credit for his role in developing what looks like a raw-but-promising bike – but also did crash a couple of times in the same place, which won’t have helped progression through the weekend.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: DNS Grand Prix: DNF
With the Honda competitive again and Joan Mir putting himself in prime position to capitalise by making the top 10 on Friday, coming off a positive private test at Barcelona, this was another big opportunity missed in the end.
He can’t be faulted too much for hurting his neck in a crash and skipping all of Saturday’s activities – even though it is part of the maths for someone who crashes so much.
Taking the start on Sunday only to run Zarco out wide at Turn 4 and then lose the front, taking them both out, was actively detrimental to Honda’s wider weekend – but a ride height device issue might have been culpable there, according to both Mir’s own words and footage The Race has seen.
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: DNF
Even before the crash at Tramonto, coming in 3km/h faster, that ended his grand prix, Alex Rins’s race was basically done already – with a jump start that gave him no advantage and a fuel consumption warning “disturbing” him on lap two.
Perhaps there had been an opportunity to at least do a respectable race on the medium rear tyre.
Earlier in the weekend Rins never looked particularly fast, “really struggling a lot” with rear grip on the right-hand side of the soft, just kind of an afterthought among the Yamaha rider ranks.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: DNF
More competitive on Friday in the familiar high-grip confines of Friday, with the grip granting him some welcome rear support, Pecco Bagnaia qualified just 0.062s back from Ducati team-mate Marquez with an imperfect lap – even if the small gap was a difference of four positions.
He was then completely out of sorts in both races, looking uneasy as usual with the sprint-spec fuel tank as he shuffled down the order on Saturday – which included two bikes getting ahead thanks to a Turn 9 mistake – then crashing out of seventh as he started to drop back from Di Giannantonio on Sunday at that same Turn 9.
There’s a case to be made that he has been a bottom-five rider in MotoGP since the Red Bull Ring a month ago.
Qualifying: 23rd Sprint: 19th Grand Prix: 15th
There were glimpses of performance at Barcelona last week, but Misano was too much for Somkiat Chantra – who was last in every relevant session, save for the grand prix, where LCR team-mate Zarco ‘helped out’ by finishing a lap down.
Coming off his serious knee injury, he felt in better shape physically than at Barcelona, but couldn’t nail qualifying and was vibration-limited in both races.