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Quiz Val on his German GP MotoGP rider rankings
🕑 Added 2025-07-13 18:07:25 +0000 UTCA dry German Grand Prix that was somehow a whole lot messier than a wet sprint race a day earlier left Val with plenty to untangle when it came to his MotoGP rider rankings - even with a depleted field.
How's he done? Let him know your thoughts and questions in the comments section below this post and he'll tackle them in his Rankings Debrief video later this week.
Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 1st GP: 1st
Marquez's swashbuckling recovery ride in the rainy sprint after his Turn 1 error felt like it should have belonged to a different race - not one that pays half-points in a season where his championship lead is already massive.
But that's just how he's wired, and it sure was entertaining.
Sunday was less so but only because Marquez didn't give himself a handicap this time, instead in full control from start to finish - with Fabio Di Giannantonio behind him marvelling at how precise the six-time champion was corner after corner, lap after lap.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 3rd GP: 4th
Quartararo's haul of results from the Sachsenring speak for themselves. But they do not speak for the Yamaha M1, with the 2021 champion struggling to see the bright side after his attrition-influenced fourth-place finish in the grand prix.
He said the Yamaha had "no pace" on Friday and treated Sunday as confirmation - overheating the rear and struggling to fight others - and clearly did very well to stay ahead of Fermin Aldeguer in the closing stages.
But Saturday was the real highlight, maybe the best he's looked in MotoGP in the wet and a long overdue first (first not penalty-stripped, anyway) sprint podium.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 8th GP: 2nd
If the younger Marquez's position as this season's big revelation needed cementing any further - well, here's some more cement.
In remarkably little pain given he'd broken his hand two weeks prior, he was nonetheless "super stiff" on the bike and revealed he'd been told by the doctors "100 times" not to crash.
This influenced his approach to Saturday's sprint, where in the wet he feared a Le Mans-like highside out of nowhere and didn't feel so good anyway.
But the Sunday ride was a monumental effort given the circumstances and, if second is the realistic ambition for the season, he outscored his main rival in both races while not fully fit.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 16th GP: 6th
That Marini managed to score the Honda factory team's best finish since 2023 right now, mid-July, after his Suzuka 8 Hours testing crash at the end of May is pretty incredible.
He admittedly was "lucky" with the attrition, but the field wasn't completely depleted and with Marini lacking strength on the left side of his body at a track like this - and in pain on the right side as a result of the efforts to compensate - even ninth or 10th would've been more than acceptable.
The wet sprint was a write-off, hindered by a medium wet rear tyre choice that just didn't work out at all despite indications that it really should've, but by the chequered flag on Sunday it was already long, long forgotten.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 2nd GP: DNF
Bezzecchi put himself in a good position for the weekend by catching a tow from Bagnaia on his best lap - by far - on Friday, though felt that laptime was achievable riding solo, too, just less comfortably.
That Q2 spot came in handy because the wet Saturday predictably unlocked the best of Bezzecchi, even if his sprint advantage over Marquez proved just a mirage in the end. The gap in sector three proved punishing, and Bezzecchi attributed this to wheelspin perhaps created by him being over-exuberant in getting the rear up to temperature in the early going.
He was close to completing a superb weekend on Sunday, but lost a nailed-on second place at Turn 1 - braking a little less, going a little less sideways, triggering understeer and getting caught out.
He admitted it was potentially contributed to, ironically, by him seeing Di Giannantonio fall off up ahead.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 5th GP: 8th
Fresh from Suzuka 8 Hours testing, Miller put together his best weekend in a good while, even if it lacked the peaks you may have expected from looking at the weather forecast.
What should've been a strong front row chance for Miller went begging due to an early Q2 crash "identical" to Maverick Vinales' - a highside on a tyre that wasn't ready, temperature-wise.
He at least got to salvage something from Q2 with his spare bike, which wasn't really set up for the wet, but didn't get a great start (with wheelspin triggered by a discarded tear-off, according to his team-mate Miguel Oliveira) and then struggled with the longevity of the rear tyre.
Sunday in the dry was not too dissimilar, with Miller's initial burst of pace and overtake on Quartararo reversed - as Quartararo admitted he had expected. But, surviving two big Turn 1 moments, he at least brought it home for decent points.
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 6th GP: 7th
Binder had a stronger-than-usual start to his weekend - cannily using other riders (specifically Aldeguer) as a reference to get his second sector sorted and secure a Q2 spot - then didn't come on as strong as you'd expect.
Losing sixth on the grid to yellow flags didn't hurt him much in the sprint, as he ended up where his pace shook out anyway, struggling with rear tyre temperature and wheelspin.
And Sunday brought tyre pressure frustrations, the front up to 2.1psi and refusing to stabilise as Binder just couldn't extricate himself from the battling pack.
Crucially though, this was at least a lot more like the Binder we're used to - bringing home the points that were on the table.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 4th GP: DNF
This was a very difficult Di Giannantonio weekend to take stock of. Ultimately, the feeling is more positive than negative.
Yes, he crashed, and a poor qualifying in the wet had hurt his weekend. But his single-lap pace in the dry, his big limitation as of late, was clearly strong here, and most evidence pointed to him being second-fastest behind Marquez.
Sunday, indeed, looked set to play out that way before a slightly later Turn 1 braking, with slightly more lean angle, ended his weekend on the spot.
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 7th GP: DNF
Zarco was slightly better than his fellow Honda riders in the dry and a lot better than them in the wet, so cannot rank too low here even if the headline results are clearly unremarkable.
He was shocked by the wet medium rear tyre - a "logical" choice given he'd already thrived on it in qualifying - struggling to reach its temperature working range in the sprint despite conditions that should've been more suited to that. It resulted in a "big chance of podium or victory totally missed".
For much of Sunday it looked like he was going to be repaid, but a front tyre down to 70°C - when it should've been about 10-15°C more - and running under legal pressure (to the point where he admitted afterwards the best strategy would've been to roll off and fall behind Quartararo) caught him out at Turn 1.
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 10th GP: 5th
Aldeguer crashed twice on Friday, which potentially bailed him out on Sunday - given that one of those crashes was a Turn 1 tip-off that taught him that corner was not to be messed with.
He took risks elsewhere instead (specifically the daunting Turn 11 - Waterfall) and salvaged the race solidly given the lack of early progress - though ideally, of course, the irritated Quartararo should've been beaten, too.
The wet performance on Saturday was also solid if not too remarkable. This ultimately wasn't one of Aldeguer's most impressive weekends pace-wise, but after a run of errors and results left on the table it was a useful correction that hadn't looked on the cards on Friday.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 12th GP: 3rd
Bagnaia admitted he's growing fatigued of finishing "more or less always in third place" - but though the grid position made that a best-case scenario here on Sunday, he really needed to be beating at least the slower of the Marquezes here for his recent progress to feel real.
But at least Sunday was a clear upgrade on a "shocking" Saturday with no pace in the wet. It was the exact sort of day that reminds you that, even if Bagnaia sorts out his ongoing Ducati ill-feeling, he will have precious little margin in the fight against his team-mate - because his team-mate does not have days like these, nor conditions in which he could imaginably be so far off.
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 9th GP: DNF
Acosta was the fastest KTM rider at the Sachsenring, seemingly by a lot, but the dearth of accompanying results is a lot harder to accept during a sophomore campaign than it would've been in 2025.
Annoyed at a "really stupid" Friday crash, he had a more costly off on Saturday - going off-track on a 'small river' while in pursuit of Marc Marquez - then an even costlier one on Sunday.
Acosta felt the grand prix crash, out of the podium battle, was a reflection of the knife-edge the "sensitive" RC16 operates on, though it also feels like a familiar refusal to accept his bike just cannot fight as high up as where Acosta is trying to force it.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 14th GP: DNF
Mir was blameless for his Sunday exit - he's getting a lot of really bad luck as of late - but even had he finished where he was running he'd still have been some way off a good weekend, on a track that admittedly doesn't suit him.
He had worn out the front tyre on Friday so came up well short in that push for Q2, then was never really close to doing that in the wet - or doing anything particularly of note.
In the dry, he was the third-best Honda rider (though maybe not by a lot) given Marini's injury.
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 13th GP: 9th
Not particularly fast, nor particularly happy, Fernandez at least took some joy from posting the seventh-fastest lap of the race - but it was half a second back from what factory Aprilia rider Bezzecchi had managed.
Bezzecchi's performances are clearly inaccessible to Fernandez right now, and he's being more than a little cryptic about it, save from the acknowledgment that he "maybe" needs a bit more help from Aprilia.
He scored just two points fewer than Bezzecchi, but that obviously doesn't tell the story of the gap - which was larger in the wet.
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: DNF GP: DNF
Coming off a really rough Assen, Morbidelli looked genuinely potent in the dry - "a bit better than [our] usual Fridays" was his description - and more competitive still in the wet, though that came with a loss of control.
His Turn 8 crash in qualifying did relatively little damage to his grid position, but his much worse Turn 8 crash in the race ended his weekend early due to the unfortunate damage to his shoulder.
Falling off twice at the same corner isn't great, but can happen in conditions like those.
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 15th GP: 10th
Here is the exhaustive list of things that were good about Rins's weekend: he stayed upright.
A messy Friday, including an oil leak, had set him on the wrong course, but it really doesn't feel like there was going to be a right course - with Rins sounding increasingly desperate over the next two days about a hopeless lack of edge grip.
Finishing a horrendous 39.4s back on Sunday, with 10th place a reward impossible to feel good about, he described his German GP as "not a normal weekend" that "doesn't end here" but will continue with a meeting at Brno to get to the bottom of this.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 11th GP: DNF
This was a real setback in Oliveira's mission to show Yamaha that he has a case for being retained over Miller - with his team-mate's weekend much better, and much tidier, in nearly every regard.
Oliveira lamented the "completely wrong" strategy of looking for a tow on his final run on Friday because he was locking the asymmetric front tyre at Turn 1 in the slipstream.
He went with the consensus choice of the wet soft rear tyre for the sprint but couldn't extract any grip from it, then went down very early on Sunday, tucking the front with slightly more angle while trying to catch back up to Marini up ahead.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 17th GP: DNF
Ogura's weekend just didn't come together at all, with initial performance in the dry not that great and initial performance in the wet really, really poor. It is a weakness he is well aware of, describing it as a struggle to ride at the required 90%.
But he looked to be salvaging his weekend on Sunday, like he did several times at the start of the season, before he crashed while trying to capitalise on Mir going wide at Turn 1.
It was a clumsy error, but one at a corner that had caught many out - though Ogura, who saw his Turn 1 performance as a strength, admitted this maybe should've convinced him to take a bit more care.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 18th GP: DNF
With Jorge Martin returning at Brno, Savadori gets to retreat from his full-time stint basking in the clear progress the Aprilia RS-GP has made in this time. He also retreats with a double long-lap penalty awaiting at whatever his next outing will be.
Savadori felt "something was a bit strange" with his bike in the wet sprint, where he was well off the pace - Aprilia tech chief Fabiano Sterlacchini attributing this to a bike balance issue.
Sunday was somehow a downgrade on that, with an early crash that Savadori theorised had something to do with the heavier bike at the start, then a crash under yellow flags at Turn 1 that he didn't really understand - as he wasn't pushing.
Was it the same situation as Bezzecchi's, with less brake pressure causing less of a slide and turning into understeer and a crash? Savadori wasn't sure, but found the explanation plausible.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: DNS GP: DNS
Vinales struggled for cornering on Friday, "doing a lot of metres on the track with very low speed", but was not particularly far off his fellow KTM riders.
He hasn't always been the most convincing rider in the wet in his MotoGP career, but had both the pace and the timing to get out of Q1 - only to highside at Turn 4 at the start of Q2.
It was a slightly more violent version of the exact same crash wet-weather specialist Miller had moments later - and marked an unfortunate end to Vinales' run of never missing a premier-class race through injury.
Comments
Tod Bryant
Only thing to mention here is that Alex Rins should be last. He only didn't crash because he was riding around 2s off the pace. Anybody can do that !
Dan Neale
1. I would’ve thought you’d have Luca higher! Returning from a boatload of tough injuries, scores Honda’s highest finish in two years and was ahead of his factory teammate - before said teammate hit the deck. 2. Bezzechi is a lot higher than I would’ve had him. Throwing away a P2 finish that would’ve taken him up to 4th in the standings. Seems harsh to have him so high, and Pecco - P3 finish after a really tough Saturday - down so low. 3. Fernandez 14th - this will, I suppose, depend on how much you value actually finishing the race and scoring points. The fact you have Miller 6th makes me think you do value it - which is why Fernandez being behind 5 non finishers confusing! Similar to Rins - although he had a horrible weekend, so can understand that one a bit more. 4. Splitting hairs, but Vinales behind savadori is interesting. He crashed and ruled himself out; but so did Franky who’s 14th. Savadori, admittedly a test rider, was not having a good weekend, and rounded it out with two crashes in the race - one of which was under yellow flags. Based on previous rankings, I would’ve thought crashing under yellows was as egregious as taking someone out Frankie-style, warranting a firm back of the list ranking. 5. Alex Marquez - considering his injury too, I would’ve thought finishing best of the rest would’ve got him P2 over Fabio. 6. If Marc is gonna win everything, you’re going to have to start dropping him positions based on his celebrations too. It’s only right.
