In the absence of Phillip Island MotoGP wizard Marc Marquez, this year's Australian Grand Prix was a weekend of opportunity - duly taken by a pair of Aprilia riders.
Several others put together weekends that could've made a case for first in the ranking another time, but this time it was really only down to the two winners.
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Qualified: 2nd Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 2nd
The heart says the breakthrough first-time winner should be number one here. The head says it's his Aprilia stablemate.
It's Marco Bezzecchi's own fault that his weekend was compromised, by virtue of his collision with Marc Marquez at Mandalika, but that was already baked into the Mandalika ranking (and also echoed in the fact Bezzecchi spent the Phillip Island weekend managing substantial back pain).
It's not like he was perfect otherwise - his Friday pace suggested second place in qualifying was an underperformance, his bad start in the sprint made things needlessly complex, ditto a subsequent mistake while chasing after Raul Fernandez.
But Fernandez would have had no chance of beating him in a straight fight, and neither would anybody else, and after a beatdown on Saturday he played Sunday about as well as could have been reasonably demanded.
Having erred and put MotoGP's strongest rider on the sidelines with his Mandalika faux pas, he is - ironically - MotoGP's strongest rider in Marquez's absence.
Qualified: 4th Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: 1st
When you have the best bike like this and your fellow Aprilia riders are someone injured-and-absent, someone injured-and-penalised, someone fresh from injury and someone who is a test rider, you have to do this.
And that's not even mentioning the Marquez absence. Overall, it would be dishonest to pretend that this wasn't a better opportunity than modern MotoGP usually provides - or that Fernandez was even the highest-performing Aprilia rider here.
So in normal circumstances he ranks lower still. But these aren't normal circumstances, and what he faced and overcame has to be respected.
Fernandez looked like he was hitting par on his pace every session. But in the grand prix, that came with the pressure of knowing that if he runs his pace, he achieves MotoGP immortality.
The shock of that realisation - for Fernandez said he and Trackhouse had all but ruled out a victory bid the morning of the race - was managed incredibly well.
Qualified: 5th Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 5th
Seeing fellow young Spanish riders get their first MotoGP wins is clearly getting on Pedro Acosta's nerves, given that the already hard-to-believe mask of general contentment with KTM's performance slipped here on Sunday.
He had a so-so Friday - with a crash warming up the tyres and "super instability" on the soft rear - but still got a Q2 spot out of it, then parlayed it fifth on the grid with a lap he described as "just balls" (complimentary, believe it or not).
That turned into a great ride to a sprint podium but the same trick was impossible on Sunday, with the KTM - and clearly not just his - just not preserving its tyres well enough.
For what he described as "my worst track in the calendar, KTM's worst track in the calendar" it's a genuinely fantastic return. But he's clearly not finding it particularly fulfilling while other riders are winning on other bikes.
Qualified: 10th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 2nd
Fabio Di Giannantonio is a very, very good Phillip Island rider, and this grand prix was winnable for him - at least until he placed 10th in Q2, something that The Race understands is being attributed to the quality of soft rear tyre he had at his disposal on his last run.
The tyre business is always a bit of a 'he said, she said' - so if it were truly compromised, he may as well be the best rider of the weekend.
With otherwise superior performance to his Ducati peers through the weekend, Di Giannantonio rode a methodical sprint, then flexed his usual tyre life muscles in the grand prix.
It is the highest-scoring weekend of his season, and in the conversation for his best.
Qualified: 9th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 6th
Honda's Mr. Dependable, Luca Marini is now exactly the rider it will have hoped it signed back in 2023 - and this weekend he was a steadying presence that prevented it from being a massive disappointment for the manufacturer.
The RC213V was seemingly nothing special here, which was not too surprising, and lacked turning. Ninth on the grid was solid in light of that, though Marini came to regret how he handled Turn 1 in the sprint - ending up in a melee that he wanted no part of.
That was the only time in the weekend where his grasp on the position of lead Honda rider looked at all like slipping. He was rock solid on Sunday, and - in very Marini fashion - saw no issue in pointing out that "against my team-mates I did a very good weekend" and that the target now is to beat Johann Zarco to finish as top Honda in the standings.
The gap is eight points, but Marini outscored Zarco in five of the last six. It really does help when a rider just outright refuses to crash.
Qualified: 8th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 10th
Pol Espargaro said that it isn't in his interest to see out the season as stand-in, that he hopes Maverick Vinales is back as soon as possible as he is "much faster than me".
Fair, except for that last part, because I'm not sure anyone is "much faster" on the KTM than Espargaro. Given the lack of wildcards and the fact anyway of not being a regular rider, it is absolutely remarkable how seamlessly he's been slotting in as a competitive KTM rider.
Fastest of the RC16s on Friday, even if it was aided by a tow and some Acosta conservatism. Strong in Q2. Compromised by the soft rear pushing the hard front in the sprint, but still competitive and combative. Good on Sunday even if he cooked the rear tyre earlier even than other KTMs - why wouldn't he, given he just doesn't have the recent race experience of his peers?
Don't get it twisted - this all isn't "very good for a test rider/TV pundit". It's just very good.
Qualified: 6th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: 4th
For someone who shunted twice in Q2, once slowly and once at major speed, this was in the end a very productive weekend for Alex Marquez - whose second place in the championship is now nailed on, deservedly so.
He was struggling with pushing from the soft rear in the sprint, feeling like he had whiffed on the choice of the hard front, so just brought it home, but harboured ambitions of taking on Fernandez on Sunday - which seemingly only robbed him of tyre life instead.
With second, third or fourth not a major difference right now, he yielded in the podium battle under late pressure from first Di Giannantonio and then Bezzecchi. I would not expect him to be as relaxed about it next time out at Sepang, where he may well be the favourite.
Qualified: 1st Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 11th
Given where he had started both races, Fabio Quartararo really didn't get much out of this one.
Both times he went backwards off the line, both times he was a non-presence or worse afterwards. The sprint had been additionally compromised by the decision to run the "chewing gum" medium front - a decision Quartararo admits went against his team's preference - while the Sunday race was just generally poor, Quartararo repeatedly getting overtaken on the main straight like he was stood still, which Yamaha's power deficit doesn't really explain at a track like this as it wasn’t about slow-corner exit speed like usual.
Quartararo's pole, however, was one of the coolest things anyone in MotoGP has done this season, and the fact it's pole number five is absolutely mind-boggling. He must get some credit for that - and much less credit but credit still for bringing it home in both races.
Qualified: 12th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: 7th
Good on Friday, poor on Saturday, good on Sunday. As we say sometimes, two out of three ain't bad.
This was an encouraging demonstration of Rins' recent progress, though it still needs confirming on a more conventional track - and the fact he was puzzled by a loss of rear grip on Saturday is worrying, given that qualifying has overall been such a limitation.
He wasn't really a factor on Saturday and risked another anonymous race on Sunday when he couldn't disengage his ride height device into Turn 1, so had to take a sub-optimal line through Turn 2, but the then had stellar pace and longevity - showing up not just the other Yamahas but the hard-to-overtake KTMs.
Qualified: 3rd Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: DNF
A very sad Jack Miller felt after the Sunday crash that he'd "let everybody down, let the team down" but his awesome sprint has to count for a lot.
After struggling at Turn 1 in particular on Friday, he had done very well to go Q1-to-Q2 and fired in a great early Q2 lap on a used rear - but maybe slightly underperformed on the fresh tyre, riding close (but not that close) behind Yamaha stablemate Quartararo.
The time left on the table is mitigated, though, by the fact tyre warm-up had been complicated due to a tyre blanket delay (as the team waited to see if he'd make Q2) and triggered an outlap trip through the gravel.
His performance held up superbly in the sprint even if overtaking a KTM after already overtaking a Ducati proved too much of an ask - but the Siberia corner proved unfriendly on Sunday, giving him a couple of warnings, then finally catching him out.
Qualified: 7th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 14th
This was a humbling first post-win weekend for Fermin Aldeguer, though he was a bit better - and certainly a lot faster - than the results suggest.
Admitting on Friday that the step from Moto2 to MotoGP at this track was bigger than at most, he took until Saturday to uncover some single-lap performance but ultimately put himself in a solid grid position.
But he struggled in the early laps in both races - which on both days meant finding himself in the thick of KTM-land, fighting bikes you do not want to fight.
The sprint was already a lost cause when he crashed out. But Sunday's race was looking like a borderline podium charge, though hindered by how long it took him to clear the defensive Espargaro, before a technical issue (thought to relate to the ride height device) ruined everything just as he'd started to show his best pace.
Qualified: 20th Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: 9th
It's looked very rough for Enea Bastianini since around the time of his split with crew chief Alberto Giribuola - perhaps coincidence, most likely a contributing factor but not the full explanation.
He had reason to dread this one after struggling in the fast sector at Mandalika, and the single-lap portions of the weekend were really, really poor. Sector one was accurately pinpointed as a problem area on Friday, but come Q1 every sector was really poor.
What happened next was either the consequence of a change to the engine braking and power delivery - something he said his side hadn't played around with much at all recently - or just the usual Bastianini qualifying-to-race-pace contrast. Probably both, but he made a lot of progress in both races, though like all of his KTM peers he ran out of tyre life over the full distance.
Qualified: 13th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 8th
This wasn't really a bad weekend by Brad Binder - just a really messy one in which he by and large didn't help himself.
It was never going to play to his strengths, as the KTM wasn't holding up well over race distances this weekend so to get anything out of it you needed to maximise qualifying. He did not, struggling with instability and vibration on Friday - though it's fair to say he actually did a pretty good job, laptime-wise, in Q1 and was unlucky.
However, he made his life more difficult than needed by getting in Zarco's way in Q1 (he says he didn't see Zarco) and picking up a grid penalty (while avoiding a second one for his part in Lorenzo Savadori's big crash, with the available footage insufficient for us to gauge his culpability but the stewards satisfied he didn't cross a line).
He understeered and tucked the front right away in the sprint, but performed reasonably on Sunday - though wasn't immune from KTM's lack of tyre longevity, which he attributes to a major lack of edge grip.
Qualified: 16th Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 12th
A Phillip Island winner in Moto3 and Moto2 but with no prior record of basically anything at all at the track in MotoGP, Miguel Oliveira had a bit of a going-through-the-motions weekend that did pick up a bit in the end.
He felt he got his Friday push strategy wrong but accepted he likely won't have been in Q2 anyway, then really laboured on Saturday - electronics-limited out of the final corner over one lap, then suffering heavy tyre consumption in the sprint.
But work on the electronics paid off somewhat in the main race, and he overtook several riders to finish just seven tenths back from leading Yamaha Quartararo - after 1.261s had separated them in qualifying.
Qualified: 14th Sprint: 11th Grand Prix: DNF
Not Joan Mir's finest work - at a track where he posted the best finish (fifth) of his injury-ravaged rookie season, and then hasn't scored anything at all since.
That probably should've changed on Saturday as Mir worked his way up the order after making some fruitful changes in-weekend to dial out the wind-multiplied instability that had "destroyed" him on Friday.
But he came off the worst into an apparent three-into-one with Marini and Espargaro so dropped out of the points, then went down on Sunday with an overheated front tyre.
Qualified: 15th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: DNF
Zarco was on 97 points seven rounds into the season. 12 rounds later, he's only added 31 - and that feels a fair reflection, because things have been really rough.
The introduction of Honda's upgrades to his side of the LCR garage has clearly not been a cure-all, to the point where he somewhat counter-intuitively went backwards in spec, to what he described as "the in-between machine", during the Phillip Island weekend.
This is also because he has not had two newest-spec bikes in his garage, so has felt limited in his ability to test set-ups.
The decision was hardly transformative to his fortunes. After a Binder-hindered qualifying (in which in any case I am far from convinced Zarco had a great shot at Q2), he was relatively anonymous in the sprint, fine but unable to catch the group he should usually target, then exited the main race early in a seemingly wind-assisted crash.
This run of form doesn't feel irreversible at all, but it's certainly not good.
Qualified: 19th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 16th
One of the faces of Aprilia's recent leaps-and-bounds improvement, Savadori was a real trooper at Phillip Island - soldiering on with the weekend's largely electronics-focussed test work despite a bad, bad Q1 crash. He was caught out by Binder slowing up ahead and fell at some speed, coughing up blood in the aftermath and with his neck and back stiff.
This limited any actual chance of race results, but it's clear that on the peaks he had some really solid speed here (with a Sunday fastest lap just seven tenths off) - a good sign for the things he was testing.
Qualified: 18th Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: 13th
Much closer to tester Savadori than the two Aprilias making hay out front, Ai Ogura probably should've used his lingering right wrist injury as an excuse - but actually admitted he didn't feel too hindered by it.
"The bike works really well, I was just too slow," was his quintessentially-Ogura assessment on Saturday, though Sunday with the medium rear was a little better.
Intriguingly, he admitted his underperformance in high-speed corners is linked to his crashes this season - they're on his mind - and that will, of course, need resolving. But Sepang, in any case, should be much better than this.
Qualified: 22nd Sprint: 20th Grand Prix: 18th
Of Ducati tester Michele Pirro's 69 prior MotoGP starts, just one came at Phillip Island - 13 years ago. So this was going to be tough, and it was.
Given that, and a general lack of MotoGP race fitness as Ducati isn't allowed wildcards due to its concession status, the on-paper results really didn't matter all that much as long as Pirro stayed out of trouble, which he did.
He seemed to take a decently-sized step forward between Saturday and Sunday, but should in any case be much-much-much more comfortable at Sepang.
Qualified: 21st Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: 17th
Somkiat Chantra just looked overmatched here, OK-ish in qualifying but ultimately struggling to eke out anything even resembling meaningful performance. MotoGP has seemed too fast and too aggressive for him this year, and it stands to reason Phillip Island would punish that in particular, especially as he encountered chatter.
He really probably should be last, but did stay on the bike and actually divebombed his way past Pecco Bagnaia in the sprint in what is bound to be one of the more memorable moments of the latter's season.
Qualified: 17th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: 15th
A strong contender for the worst weekend of not only Franco Morbidelli's season but his Ducati tenure. He had been quite good in 2025 at least keeping the 'floor' of performance reasonably high relative to some of his Ducati peers, but here the floor caved in and the weekend fell into the Earth's core.
Bereft of confidence from the outset, probably not helped by a fast crash in first practice (but also just lacking stability over the bumps), Morbidelli trundled through the weekend - never a threat for Q2 or the top 10.
"I couldn't express any pace whatsoever," he readily admitted. And Sunday was particularly poor in the end after he "overcooked" his tyres, struggling very very badly in the final laps.
He is somehow not the last-placed Ducati rider in this ranking, but maybe he should have been - I changed my mind multiple times on this one.
Qualified: 11th Sprint: 19th Grand Prix: DNF
This was absolutely terrible and also a clear improvement on Mandalika.
With the Motegi double win a glaring outlier, Bagnaia has now scored single-digit points in six of the last seven rounds, and no points at all in three of the last four. As has often been the case in this span, his level of performance has been inversely proportional to the importance of the session.
Friday suggested a reasonable weekend but Q2 was a disappointment and the sprint was maybe the worst MotoGP race he's ever done, with onboards showing that Bagnaia had no stability in the high-speed corners and no way of accelerating through them.
His Ducati crew added some "heaviness" for the main race, and though he was very slow in the early laps - "needing a bit of time to understand it" - he did get into some semblance of a groove before crashing out.
"I said to myself 'I will not finish last again'," he explained. "So I pushed like hell today. I accepted that it was possible to crash."
The pace wasn't incredible or anything, but also suggests it was malpractice not to have made the changes beforehand. It feels borderline rude to place him behind Morbidelli, who had nothing all weekend, but while Bagnaia's highs (ish) were certainly higher, the lows were lower.
