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Quiz Val on his Brno MotoGP rider rankings
🕑 Added 2025-07-21 08:27:49 +0000 UTCThe balance of power between MotoGP manufacturers in 2025 was shaken up big time by its return to Brno, which added some weather complications into the mix to really test the assembled riders and crews.
OK, so in the end it was still a fight for second place - in both races and also in these rider rankings - but beyond the clear standout there were a lot of interesting performances to get stuck into.
Here's Val's ranking of how they all performed. Pop your questions or thoughts on it in the comments and he'll reply in his rankings Q&A video later this week.
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 1st GP: 1st
In lieu of describing Marc Marquez's fifth consecutive double in detail, it feels more fitting to simply paraphrase the point made by someone who will be feeling this current run more keenly than anyone: his Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia.
Bagnaia said that at Brno the Ducati was, for once, not really the fastest bike. But it was the only bike that had Marc Marquez on it.
"The feeling is like '19 or '14," Marquez himself said. It also increasingly looks that way from the outside.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 2nd GP: 3rd
Picking first place this weekend was the easiest thing in the world. Picking second was a real, real pain.
Of those in the conversation, Pedro Acosta was simply the tidiest. He can hardly be faulted for a slight qualifying underperformance - as he got caught up in the Alex Marquez/Bagnaia games - and then squeezed out every droplet on offer in the sprint, where Acosta knew Marc Marquez was always going back ahead, and the main race.
The KTM was really potent, yes, but this is the Acosta we've wanted to see all year.
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 9th GP: 9th
The new gold standard for 2025 in terms of stand-in performances. Pol Espargaro said he isn't in the hunt for a full-time return because "there are faster, younger guys than me on the market". The "younger" part is true (Pol's now 34), but on the evidence of Brno you can argue about the other bit.
The KTM being really good at Brno flattered Espargaro a little, yes, but let's not understate the performance. In conventional conditions he had monster pace for a part-timer, flirting with Q2 and scoring points in both races.
He described overtaking Jorge Martin in the sprint as a "nightmare", due to Espargaro himself being very mindful of his duty to ride "responsibly" as a tester - and specifically not to re-injure Martin, who he overtook anyway.
Sunday was conditioned by a dreadful start - a clutch "f**k-up" - caused by inexperience in that area, but this set up an inspired recovery.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 5th GP: 6th
Fabio Quartararo had more or less the weekend he'd expected here: good in fully-wet conditions that suit the Yamaha (increasingly so), strong in qualifying even without doing the perfect lap, but just off the pace in the race.
He went backwards early on on both Saturday and Sunday, and attributed this - as always - to the inline-four engined M1 bike being uncompetitive in battle.
His fellow Yamaha riders hardly think he's exaggerating. As Miguel Oliveira explained of Quartararo's backwards momentum in the early going: "He doesn't do a bad start or a bad beginning of the race."
In the end, Quartararo was again Yamaha's reference rider in every part of the weekend that counted.
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: 4th GP: 2nd
Marco Bezzecchi looked fast throughout but was kind of making a meal of the weekend through Friday and Saturday - with two crashes in practice, another in Q2 and a needless collision with Quartararo in the sprint, in which Bezzecchi "maybe misjudged the space that I had" and took his Aprilia's left side of the aero package clean off against the Yamaha.
In those circumstances, fourth was an OK return in the end. And he was unimpeachable on Sunday, with assertive riding in the early laps that on another day - at another track, maybe against another rider - would've been enough for the win.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 11th GP: 7th
Given what Martin had been through physically - and what he'd put himself and Aprilia through contractually - this feels like a very low ranking for a weekend like this. It is simply a reflection of many other riders performing as well as you could reasonably expect.
Martin - nervous pre-race on Saturday, "crying" pre-race on Sunday - clearly left a bit on the table through a lack of experience and conditioning, but delivered an instant proof-of-concept in terms of his fit with the RS-GP for the rest of the year and beyond.
Working the rear tyre too hard in the sprint (even though he made a conscious decision not to try to push past team-mate Bezzecchi), Martin made the right adjustment on Sunday to draw a relatively low-key but infinitely positive line under a great weekend.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 6th GP: 5th
Raul Fernandez repeatedly mentioned during the weekend a Thursday meeting with Trackhouse team boss Davide Brivio that he felt could be "very important for me and my career".
If Fernandez's Brno performance really is connected to that meeting, Brivio is a miracle-worker, because Fernandez was fabulous.
Undisturbed by his Aprilia's engine going into 'protection mode' and hindering his shot at Q2 in the wet on Friday, he powered past Q1 against formidable opposition, then looked a borderline frontrunner in both races.
Fernandez acknowledged he had been a "lucky boy" to score as much as he did at the Sachsenring last week. Here, the points reflected the performance.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 3rd GP: DNF
A contender - a long shot contender, but a contender - for first place in these rankings right up to the moment of his fast off on Sunday.
Enea Bastianini, whose podium-scoring Saturday approach in battle was described as "all or nothing" by Johann Zarco before Sunday proved this conclusively, felt his issues with the KTM were being masked by both the high natural grip of the resurfaced track but also a lack of previous Brno experience on a Ducati, something he feels is consistently starting him off on the wrong foot at other venues.
He looked in with a real shot of repeating the sprint podium in the grand prix before being caught out by corner entry dynamics in clean air after running in tow previously - but also admitted he may have got a bit overexuberant.
Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 7th GP: 4th
Bagnaia didn't leave a great impression in the only straightforward part of his weekend - the Sunday race, in which his 2025-spec lack of braking confidence bit again and meant a succession of riders waltzed past him - but otherwise simply had too much going on.
Missing out on the best track conditions on Friday through little-to-no fault of his own, he pulled off a vintage Q1-to-pole recovery, even if his late-Q2 strategy of dicing with Alex Marquez for track position, on tyres he knew (though he maintained plausible deniability) were probably past their best, was a bit on the limit if admittedly clever.
He at least deserved to finish the sprint in second, which would've been his best Saturday finish of 2025, and was robbed by what Ducati insists was a dashboard tyre pressure glitch rather than human input error.
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 12th GP: 10th
Jack Miller said he "ain't got a clue" over his 2026 prospects right now - but if deliberations were still ongoing as of Brno, he clearly won't have done his chances any harm.
The Q2 crash was unfortunate, Miller trying to make up for an error earlier in the lap when he "went too deep into [Turn] 10, threw it in the wall" - and there were complications in both races. These were being slowed off the start by Alex Marquez's slow, wild getaway in the sprint, and a late engine braking issue in the main race that left him unable to the eighth place he'd spent most of the race in.
The underlying performance, though, looked pretty good. And it never looked better than on a drying track, with Miller uncorking his usual party trick on Friday - when, desperate to move on from the overheating wet rubber, he went several seconds faster as the first rider to push on slicks.
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 19th GP: DNF
Joan Mir looked solid in the wet, then qualified superbly in the dry - but went into the sprint lacking experience on the medium rear, thanks also to a bike issue during the very limited Friday dry running.
He had a problem with the launch control, while insisting he "did the same as usual" in terms of procedure, but then anyway struggled further with the rear feeling like ice and a minor bottleneck at Turn 3 catching him out and relegating him to the back.
This was his error and a somewhat difficult-to-accept one - but Mir looked to be doing everything right on Sunday when he got removed from the race by Alex Marquez's misjudgment.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 8th GP: 13th
Zarco made two notable mistakes this weekend. The crash in Q2 was one, but it didn't really cost him much - save for causing a scare when Marc Marquez's Ducati immediately followed him into the gravel.
But the choice of the soft rear tyre for the main race, faced with the hottest conditions of the weekend, was brutal and smacked of overconfidence. No other rider deviated from the medium, and Zarco quickly ran out of pace.
He had done well with the soft in the sprint - but felt his real pace had been constrained by the difficulty in overtaking. The other positive was great pace in the wet conditions that had come too early in the weekend to truly pay off.
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 14th GP: 11th
Second-to-last going through Turn 1 on Sunday, Fermin Aldeguer pulling off a salvage run to eighth on the road (before his penalty) was impressive - especially given the stress this weekend put on the grid's rookies.
Aldeguer in particular had learned the track via PlayStation, playing online, joking that "I always chose Brno-Brno-Brno" and "people told me in this chat 'but this is the real Fermin Aldeguer? you are too slow!'".
A front brake problem cost him laps in the dry on Friday and he was narrowly on the wrong end of the Q2 fight at the end of the day, before struggling in Q1 and ultimately treating the sprint as a test.
Lessons were clearly learned on Sunday - but he blotted the copybook with a move on Oliveira that was never really on and was only not a much more substantial incident because of Oliveira's keen reflexes.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: DNF GP: DNS
Fearful that a relative lack of race fitness would be exposed here, Taka Nakagami actually started the weekend quite well. He couldn't maintain the level - "struggling a lot" on a drying track with electronics and perhaps a little untidy in qualifying - but overall put together another cogent argument that he would've done a reasonable job had he stayed at LCR full-time for one more year in 2025.
But he stressed on Friday there were no regrets about stepping away - saying he was still satisfied his seven campaigns in MotoGP were "enough" - and Saturday was cruel additional evidence.
Last entering Turn 1 at the start, Nakagami gained just enough places so that going into Turn 1 the next lap he was in Augusto Fernandez's firing line and sustained a PCL injury that will be evaluated further in his native Japan.
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 15th GP: 12th
Luca Marini made no real impression on the timing screens from the first minute of the weekend to the last - yet was the highest-placed Honda rider in the main event.
He wasn't competitive at all in the wet, lamenting the fact that his side of the garage hasn't found a great rain setting in 2025 - while he had "always been fast [in the wet] in the past, even last year".
The sprint was anonymous, the grand prix better but largely through the misfortune of others - with Honda's familiar issue of vibration cited as a major limitation.
But he deserves a bit of grace given he's not been back long from his major injury - with Brno a much harsher physical test than the Sachsenring.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 10th GP: 8th
By his own admission, Brad Binder really hadn't got the pace all weekend - which meant that qualifying in particular was even more sour than usual. A track limits lap deletion - Binder isn't sure where the breach had been - turned 16th on the grid into 19th, but his confirmation that 16th anyway was as much as he felt he could do due to a lack of front grip is concerning.
He struggled to make the progress he wanted to make in the sprint and in the grand prix, lamenting a lack of corner entry performance, which you normally don't associate with the KTM.
Given he'd won here last time out in 2020, to be probably the worst of the KTMs this time - in a roster including an injury stand-in - felt inconveniently significant.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 13th GP: 17th
Just not really in the mix, at a bad time for his MotoGP career, in a weekend where he'd hoped the test he'd had with Yamaha earlier at Brno would at least prove a brief advantage (but it never did).
Oliveira was overworking the front through Friday practice and struggled in qualifying, having to lap with the medium rear because he found the soft totally non-compliant.
A move to a Quartararo/Miller-like set-up, including weight distribution and wheelbase, was a little positive for the sprint, which was a genuinely good showing. But the changes unloaded the front too much - and trying for a happy medium on Sunday seemed to work in the warm-up, yet didn't make for a good race.
But he was at least in points contention before being divebombed into a different country by Aldeguer.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 18th GP: 15th
Alex Rins is ranked lower than he had been at the Sachsenring, but don't get me wrong - this was clearly a much, much better weekend from him.
He had a primary bike issue on Friday but said it didn't really affect the end result and probably should've made Q2, which would've transformed his weekend.
Going through Q1 was always going to be a tall order (Rins did a reasonable job) and he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time at the start on Saturday, having to check up for the contact between the two Gresini riders - and dropping to the back, with pace to challenge the Ducatis of Fabio Di Giannantonio and Alex Marquez ahead but no real shot at overtaking.
He also struggled in battle on Sunday, as Yamaha riders do - but says qualifying must be the big focus on his side for now.
Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 16th GP: 14th
In the rookie battle this weekend, even the relatively modest heights scaled by Aldeguer were unavailable to Ai Ogura - who by and large was just hanging on.
"A little better" than before in the wet on Friday but still not good enough, Ogura was puzzled by his major crash in practice but never suggested it'd impacted his weekend.
He just didn't qualify well enough, ran his pace to a lowly 16th in the sprint, then improved a little in the grand prix - though progress up the order largely relied, according to the man himself, on other riders making errors.
Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: DNF GP: 18th
Fernandez's ranking is only a reflection of his long lap-earning crash into Nakagami on Saturday - in which he got caught out by the pack ahead and tried to drop his M1 on the ground early to avoid a hard impact with the Honda, which still happened.
That was a bad error. The rest of the weekend - if you take into account his part-time status and a lack of previous Brno MotoGP experience save for testing Yamaha's new V4 bike there - was genuinely high quality again, especially in terms of pace progression in the limited dry mileage.
If he were doing the full schedule, would he have been the third-fastest Yamaha rider here? The second? It's credit to Fernandez that questions like these can be asked right now, even if the big takeaway is the strife he's inflicted upon Nakagami.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: DNF GP: 16th
There was maybe a good weekend available to Di Giannantonio somewhere, somehow, but it gradually turned into a slow motion car crash instead.
He lacked braking performance in the fight for Q2 spots in the wet on Friday, then just narrowly missed out advancing out of Q1 - with a lap that would've been good enough for ninth in Q2, even without taking into account that the track seemed to improve between segments.
But he stalled his Ducati off the line in the sprint - worse than he'd ever done in any practice start, according to Di Giannantonio - then struggled for front feeling and crashed, discussing the matter in a vague manner that sure sounded like a coded complaint about a bad tyre.
The Sunday performance, though, was also nowhere, with Di Giannantonio lamenting that he wasn't "precise" enough with his feedback in the limited dry mileage to help his VR46 team get the bike in the right window.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 17th GP: DNF
Alex Marquez's weekend peaked with his scooter heroics on Friday, his last-gasp Q2-worthy lap after a mad dash through the circuit's access roads underlining that 2025 feeling that this is his year, too.
Then things got worse, and then things got properly bad.
He wasn't very impressed with Bagnaia's Q2 tactics that hampered his own qualifying, describing them as "not [enough] for a penalty but not the best way to be fair", then had his sprint undone by massive wheelspin at the start.
There was also needless contact with Gresini team-mate Aldeguer, though it's hard to really blame Marquez for that one. No, in terms of 'needless contact' it's Sunday that really stood out - with his blunder wiping out himself and Mir, and the acknowledgment afterwards he needed to have been more patient.
Comments
John O'Hara
I’m a bit surprised Val hasn’t snuck Mav in the top 5 here. If Pol can make top 10 and Bastianini is challenging Acosta, then imagine what Vinales would have achieved? First KTM win gone begging? At the very least, the absent riders should have been ranked above Alex for how bad his weekend was.
Amanda Kirchner
Alex blamed his poor start in the sprint on Marc’s tear off 🙈 He had a shocker! Only one who had a worse weekend was Digia - I have no idea what was going on there. Appalling weekend. Taka was super high on your rankings Augusto was another rider (along with Taka and Digia) that I didn’t even realise was there! Mir - if he didn’t have bad luck would have no luck at all Funny how Alex, if not starting off the front 2 rows, reverted to his demolition derby style!
