Czech Grand Prix 2026 MotoGP rider rankings

Something that happened in a gravel trap made last place in the Czech Grand Prix rider rankings very simple. But the top spots were a much tougher call.

Agree or disagree? Let us know your thoughts in the comments on this post in The Race Members' Club and Val will reply in his Q&A later this week.

Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: 2nd

Marc Marquez had this position in the rankings on lock until I actually sat down to write the feature.

Marquez was his usual ruthlessly effective self but in the end it's Ogura who had the greater edge over his respective manufacturer stablemates, even if the comparison was muddied a bit by a) illness and b) madness.

Ogura didn't win but he did ride his finest weekend in MotoGP yet. Fastest on Friday, he was convinced he couldn't replicate that in qualifying - but did.

"Front feeling wasn't what I expected" in the sprint but he was still plenty quick enough to win, and just not quite on the right side of the race dynamic. That was also true in the main race, even after a much-improved start.

Maybe his race strategies could have been sharper, but his pure performance looked as good as it gets.

Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 1st

Marquez appears to enjoy such a remarkable amount of control over these weekends, even as his fitness is still catching up to his talent.

This control slipped a bit on Friday with two crashes in left-handers - where he admitted he "relaxes" too much - but he had no trouble navigating his way into Q2 (and qualifying well the following day) and was superb in the races.

With a slightly better start on Saturday this could have been another 37-point weekend to go with Balaton, but in any case he's taken ridiculous chunks out of the championship lead.

Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 3rd

You feel that a Pecco Bagnaia operating at the very peak of his powers would've stayed in the victory fight longer on Sunday (and, yes, probably would've won). But something about Ducati's post-2024 transformation has sapped him of his previous ability to keep up devastating pace over a full distance.

That is the one caveat. The rest of the weekend was extremely solid, Friday to Saturday morning to Saturday afternoon, the sprint in particular a beauty of a ride (aided by an extremely valuable improvement in starts).

Bagnaia has been pretty decent for a while already, but this was obviously his best weekend of 2026 so far.

Qualifying: 8th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: DNF

Acosta's weekend made for a tough watch, because there was little doubt that he had again put in a fairly exceptional shift - at least once he got a "quite strange" crash out of the way early on on Friday.

He was the top KTM rider as always in qualifying, and its best hope in both races. But his sprint was limited by a stuck rear ride height device that he had been working his way around - but ultimately crashed while trying to force it unstuck.

That his grand prix was initially turning out a little complicated was probably also by design - Acosta ran way higher than expected early on, but had to deliberately sacrifice two positions (and multiple seconds) to keep front tyre pressure under control - and admitted after the race he and his crew chief Paul Trevathan are deliberately pushing the limit there.

But it was going to be a great finish still, until KTM's increasingly bizarre reliability troubles struck again in the form of the bike shutting off.

Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: 7th

A 'warrior' effort that the classification doesn't reflect - but so major was Fernandez's health situation that Aprilia had Lorenzo Savadori on standby and expected to use him.

Fernandez was diagnosed with appendicitis in the lead-up to the weekend, spending Wednesday and Thursday in constant medical consultations and tests, ultimately avoiding surgery but not before his stamina had taken a massive beating.

He clearly didn't feel 'good' at any point of the weekend, even as the appendix inflammation subsided. Not strong enough to push to the fullest in qualifying conditions, and looking pretty awful every time he came in front of the media, he extracted solid finishes from both races.

As for whether his appendix will require surgical removal, this is apparently a question for a doctor's appointment next Monday after Assen.

Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: 5th

This was a 'crashy' weekend for Honda and for once Mir wasn't a culprit - save for a silly Friday fall in the gravel because he'd gone off and expected a different material in the gravel trap once he arrived.

He tried to look for a tow in Q2 but just couldn't make it work anywhere near as well as rookie stablemate Diogo Moreira, yet in race trim he was clearly the most effective Honda rider.

The sprint was dictated by being in a melee with the KTMs, but sticking with the soft rear tyre - as the sole rider to do so, in a choice that perplexed and impressed team-mate Luca Marini in equal measure - unlocked a great grand prix ride.

Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: 4th

It's hard to imagine a more representative weekend for Di Giannantonio's season (or at least recent form).

He was the top Ducati rider over one lap in both the important sessions (Friday practice and Q2), and probably the top Ducati rider in tyre conservation, but only has a pair of fourths to show for it while the factory riders bagged the podiums.

In the sprint, he got outfoxed by Marquez while behind Moreira after the launch, then was powerless to recover given the less-optimal choice of the medium rear.

The tyre picture was equalised on Sunday, and the pace was clearly there, but he came to regret a lack of "patience" in the early fight against Marquez again - getting on the throttle too early through Turn 3 and setting off a sequence that dropped him down to sixth and left him with too much to do.

Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 6th

A weekend as unremarkable as it was inoffensive by the Ducati-contracted sophomore.

It promised a little more on Friday, though Aldeguer briefly flirted with an assignment to Q1 when he "lost a bit of concentration" in traffic during the time attack phase.

Qualifying itself was then a struggle due to a front tyre he didn't get on with (but didn't change between runs), and he was all the way down to 14th in the sprint after a bad start - but got back into the points.

The grand prix start was far better, and despite a mistake early on - he had a Turn 2 'shake' and so the brakes didn't work right into Turn 3 - he salvaged a solid result.

Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 11th Grand Prix: 14th

Razgatlioglu's whole weekend defies the format of this feature somewhat. In a more competitive MotoGP situation - in a situation more befitting of his talents, a situation he himself craves - his massive qualifying underperformance and the impeding grid penalty on top of it would have wrecked his weekend.

But in the current situation both did nothing much at all. Razgatlioglu admitted he rode qualifying suboptimally, "race style" - but when he took that "race style" to the actual races he was pretty majestic.

The grand prix ride in particular looked potent relative to other Yamahas, and he seemed to count on it from the get go - getting frustrated by Alex Rins's early defending as he hinted the Spaniard should've known he was fighting a losing battle.

The final salvo of laps to close in and overtake Maverick Vinales for 14th was particularly strong.

Qualifying: 6th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 11th

Moreira's #11 bike is a common presence towards the sharp end by now, though this weekend this was kind of a mirage.

He already felt limited by the incomplete data of an injury-compromised Brno Moto2 weekend from last year, then crashed right away here on Friday to add to the challenge - but while the clean-air performance never came together, he displayed a Johann Zarco-like knack for getting the absolute most out of following rivals.

Tucking in behind Ogura secured Q2 on Friday. Following Ogura again in Q2 made for a good grid position. And Moreira has been such a mighty starter in MotoGP that it was no surprise to see him at the sharp end in the two races.

But he crashed immediately on Saturday, then went helplessly backwards on Sunday - regretting that he didn't copy Mir's soft-tyre gamble, but also just seemingly regressing to a more real position.

Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 10th

Brno was Bastianini's 'coming out party' at KTM last year, his first truly promising weekend on the bike. He actually scored more points this time - but the overall picture was much more subdued.

The front tyre was a complication, in traffic and out of it, and the qualifying strategy wasn't working out even before he got his final attempt wrecked by Razgatlioglu-shaped traffic.

He placed as the top KTM in both the sprint and the grand prix, and looked good value for it, in the 'non-Acosta' class - as Acosta would've obviously been way up the road had his bike lasted.

Qualifying: 16th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 8th

An end result Marini and Honda will take, but the path there was nothing to write home about.

Happy on the medium rear but less so on the soft on Friday, he was just on the wrong end of Honda's usual tightrope act with the top 10 - then stood no chance in Q1.

He bucked in the sprint under the pressure of heat and vibrations, but found a palate cleanser in a "really solid" grand prix ride. But he was also keenly aware it was overshadowed by team-mate Mir's soft-tyre heroics - on a rear compound that was "never" an option for Marini, due to riding style and physique differences.

Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 16th

Miller 'disappeared' again into the familiar anonymity of his spot in the current Yamaha hierarchy - where neither his highs nor his lows seem to match those of his fellow M1 riders.

There was a lot to like about his performance in the single-lap portions of the weekend as he ran Fabio Quartararo close, but both races were unremarkable.

There was the caveat, in the sprint, of an acceleration deficit in second-to-fourth gear, but he made no mention of it on Sunday - seemingly just unable to find an answer to his Pramac team-mate Razgatlioglu's corner entry prowess.

Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: DNF

Quartararo was trying this weekend. This I am sure of - considering the Frenchman is normally loathe to look for a tow, the fact he did so on Friday is evidence of commitment to some sort of result.

And though the Yamaha was outmatched Quartararo at least took his usual position in the M1 pecking order in qualifying trim.

He got nothing out of the races. In the sprint he was "frustrated" by difficulty in the early laps before overheating the soft rear too much as he leaned on it for turning.

The takeaway after that going into Sunday was that "I had to brake more late in the beginning of the race". And he did - to overtake Brad Binder, Maverick Vinales and Marini (the latter in what he described as a "suicide overtake"), and then to crash out of the race.

Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: DNF

Rins showed up to media day at Brno with a goofy mustache that was immediately gone the next time we saw him. That's not really relevant to his performance - but I just wanted you to know.

The rest of his weekend is less interesting, although not necessarily uninteresting.

There was some sort of electronics issue on Friday and then in the grand prix, an anti-wheelie inconsistency that ultimately forced him to park it.

And there was frustration towards Franco Morbidelli running "really strange lines" in defence on Saturday, and the aforementioned frustration from Razgatlioglu on Sunday.

Outside of these tribulations there have to be serious questions about Rins's qualifying pace, yet overall the M1 is again just proving a bit too raw for his efforts to be gauged with a high degree of confidence.

Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 12th

Ragged and all over the place again, Binder - who had a surgical "tune-up" of the right arm before the weekend to fix a numbness issue - kept things respectable but not more than that.

Recent single-lap progress appeared undone here (the Q1 result suffered from a track limits deletion of his best lap, but that wasn't a great time anyway), and the race pace appeared better than at Balaton but not at the level you want from Binder.

He made a mistake in the sprint losing the front (which let Aldeguer through) but just about stayed on and kept the others behind for a point, then laboured in the pack in the grand prix.

Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 9th

It is genuinely surreal - no other way to describe it - that Martin took double-digit points out of the championship lead on a weekend that felt like a total write-off throughout, not just because of the double long lap penalty from Balaton.

The Brno long lap is extremely forgiving in terms of laptime loss. Ivan Ortola showed that in Moto2, serving a penalty and winning the race. But while Martin's race likewise suffered only limited damage - and he was physically "much better than expected" after the Balaton crash - he just did not have the kind of title performance you associate with any Aprilia rider in 2026.

Qualifying remains poor. Martin admits he still "doesn't really understand the limit of the bike" and "really feels bad" pushing for a single laptime.

But the performance in races was a bit of an eyebrow-raiser, too, and Martin sees a wider pattern in the recent performance decline, which he attributes to a loss of front feeling dating back to Mugello (or perhaps to his crashfest Barcelona weekend that preceded it?).

Qualifying: 13th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 15th

If you're the relevant decision-maker, you can talk yourself into keeping Vinales on a Tech3-run KTM into 2027 on the basis of this weekend. But only if you really want to.

He had come into the weekend admitting defeat in his quest to be 100% fit in time for the Czech GP, but there were real glimpses here and there of a rider who's finally able to be quick after a long, long recovery.

Just not in the actual races, unfortunately. He exited the sprint right away in a 'sympathy crash' moments after Moreira, then was seemingly too tired and too limited by the challenges of running in the pack to do anything of real note on Sunday.

Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 17th

Crutchlow is a fun, lovable presence in MotoGP right now but there's an inevitable ceiling to how much he can actually achieve on track - and he was probably a fair bit short of that ceiling here.

He crashed on Friday, "never did a particularly good laptime" in Q1, then crashed again in the sprint - the latter a consequence of an ongoing limitation when it comes to his fit on the bike.

But the Sunday effort was quite good (he was in the pack-ish for an extended period of time), and there's a lot to be said both for Crutchlow braving the Brno heat and for him soldiering through ongoing left shoulder issues dating back to his muscle tear at Mugello.

Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: 13th

There were some hints of hope on Friday - not great but certainly better than Balaton Park - and though Q2 was a bridge too far then, Morbidelli made things work going through Q1.

That was the end of the fun part. He went ninth-to-19th at the start of the sprint - "don't know why" - and "couldn't really do anything" after that. But even with a much more palatable start on Sunday the race pace was nowhere.

It left Morbidelli dejected and exasperated. "Maybe when the races come I forget how to ride a MotoGP bike," he said ruefully if (likely) sarcastically, with a lack of grip he's feeling on the 2025-spec Ducati still the principal culprit.

Qualifying: 4th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: SUS

Bezzecchi's act of stunning post-crash belligerence destroyed his weekend and guaranteed him last place here.

I don't know how good a rider's rest-of-weekend would need to be so that 'banned for attacking a marshal' doesn't immediately place him last - but while that is an almost-certainly impossible bar to reach, Bezzecchi had come nowhere near it.

He was competitive on Friday, despite suffering with the after-effects of the Balaton pile-up, but clearly was a step off his usual performance through Saturday - his sprint looking on the mediocre side even before he crashed and then took himself out of the grand prix in a moment of insanity.