German GP 2026 MotoGP rider rankings

Marc Marquez and Ducati ran the show as expected at the Sachsenring, but was Marquez's latest MotoGP triumph at the German venue definitely more impressive than what some of his peers lower down the order managed?

Here is our rider ranking for the Sachsenring weekend.

Agree or disagree? Leave your comments on Val's rankings on this post in The Race Members' Club and Val will reply in a Q&A later this week, exclusive to The Race Members' Club.

Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 1st

Marquez did not dominate the intra-Ducati battle to the same extent as a couple of his peers representing other manufacturers, but for once, this doesn't affect his position in the rankings.

From the start, but especially once Marco Bezzecchi went down with injury, it felt like the promise of a 37-point weekend was both a fantastic opportunity to steal the oxygen from his title rivals - and a burden to overcome.

But after an early crash on the Turn 3 bump in the opening practice - which he attributed to having not paid attention to practice in the lighter classes (as Moto2's Celestino Vietti and Milan Pawelec and Moto3's Hakim Danish had all gone down there) - he seemed in total control.

In the end, a pair of champion rides to leave his rivals fretting and stewing as they go into their July vacations.

Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: 2nd

Ogura probably will not win the 2026 riders' title, but we now have a significant sample set of weekends that suggests he can - with Sachsenring among the most convincing examples.

He didn't look great at the outset of the weekend, but found the lap he needed on Friday, then again in Q2 on Saturday (using team-mate Raul Fernandez as a handy reference), then pulled off two crucial high-quality starts.

Those opening laps are still a question mark, as he had nothing for Fabio Di Giannantonio in the sprint and fell behind Fernandez in the grand prix - before lunging his way past in a fantastic move later on, the race coming back to him as it always does.

Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 7th

On Friday, Quartararo was bewildered to be 0.4s off Miller with what he'd felt was a pretty tidy lap.

From Saturday onwards, he was back in the position of total supremacy over the other Yamaha riders - something both he and Miller confirmed was connected to a set-up shift more towards Miller (but also a set-up shift that Quartararo insisted he had already asked for on Friday and had been turned down).

This ranking will seem high. I don't think it's high at all - there is little doubt in my mind that Quartararo, a rider not too long ago accused of throwing in the towel on this season, got everything out of this weekend for Yamaha and remains an asset of exceptional value (though maybe not to Yamaha's current situation).

Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 4th

In classic Acosta fashion, he assessed his own performance so far this season as a 7/10 - which I cannot abide by, for he has been much more impressive than that, and again so this weekend.

KTM seemed to have a tougher time than expected at the Sachsenring, and perhaps Acosta's own situation was a factor here. He rocked up with a big fresh scar on his arm for carpal tunnel surgery and was only just ahead of his fellow KTMs on Friday (though he snuck into Q2 while they did not).

His Q2 performance seemingly left a lot to be desired (there's a huge difference between his 'ideal lap' of the four best sectors and his actual best lap). And the sprint was good but in a par-for-the-course sort of way.

But his grand prix effort was mighty, as he used the fact that the medium rear is more gentle on the front to stay in touch with the podium battle for more than half the race, which had looked highly implausible earlier in the weekend.

Qualifying: 4th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 3rd

Ultra-productive and well-put-together weekends by Fernandez are now the norm rather than the massive rarity they were in his earlier seasons in MotoGP. Having a superb Aprilia RS-GP at his disposal is part of this equation, but it can't be the only part.

Fernandez is becoming dependable. A "compression shock" during a moment in Saturday morning practice, leaving him with back trouble, could've so easily destroyed his weekend - and maybe would've in the past - but his production on track was such that he could've kept it secret if he wanted to.

Ogura was better and the picture within Aprilia is a truly weird one right now, but Fernandez is using his opportunities to shine.

Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: DNF

The younger Marquez soured what up to then had been a really fantastic weekend with an early exit from the grand prix on Sunday - but it is difficult to judge him too harshly, and his pace looks ominous for favoured venue Silverstone after the summer break.

His pace had caught the eye on Friday, he'd mounted a genuine pole challenge in Q2 and he was a threat to his brother in the sprint - soaking up all the wake and temperature into the front tyre but unable to find an opportunity to strike, with Marc too strong in the final two corners and Alex anyway not "100% confident with myself" at this point in his injury recovery.

Marc reckoned Alex would've beaten him on Saturday without the injury. But Sunday's race did look second-place-at-best before the crash.

Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 11th Grand Prix: 8th

Marini has been deemed surplus to requirements at Honda, but weekends like these show why he is set to stick around on the grid for 2027 (via a Tech3 KTM gig).

Ideally he will have beaten Quartararo in the Yamaha, but going wide at Turn 1 on Friday and encountering traffic meant no direct passage in Q2 - and a weekend-long struggle in the final sector ultimately left him trapped on the fifth row of the grid.

It was unsurprisingly a bit of an uphill battle from there, but eighth on Sunday was a rock-solid finish given the package, and it should not be overlooked that he's the primary reason why Honda doesn't have to worry about being beaten by Yamaha's first-year V4 bike in the constructors'.

Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: 11th

He could've done without the grid penalty for impeding - but if Honda really is continuing to deliberate whether to place Moreira or David Alonso in the factory team in 2027, it's 'one point to Moreira' this weekend.

The long corners at the Sachsenring proved a bugbear of the Hondas, and the rookie was no different - and his usual 'towing' magic was absent, as he latched on to eventual Q1 pace-setter Pecco Bagnaia on both of his Q1 runs and yet didn't seem to get too much out of it.

But both race performances - especially the sprint, in which he overtook Luca Marini and then kept him at bay - go in the plus column here.

I really like this rookie season.

Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: 5th

The mystery of Martin's vanished front-end confidence, and what Martin and Aprilia are able to do to solve it, could be the defining topic of the 2026 title battle from here.

Given how off the pace he looks (he couldn't outqualify team-mate Bezzecchi in Q2 despite the latter's massive crash, and even his best lap seemed to owe itself much to track position), he has been doing a pretty sensible job bringing home points.

Here, he twice outperformed the real picture of his performance in races by beating Bagnaia, in the sprint specifically via a Turn 11 overtake that a very honourable-in-defeat Bagnaia gleefully described as perhaps the best of the season.

But the performance outside of that instinctual early-lap magic is worrying, and Martin knows that better than anyone. In a show of impressive self-awareness, he described himself as an "anecdotal" championship leader right now.

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

A combination of some towing but also genuinely good pace allowed Miller to star on Friday, at the track where he'd made his grand prix debut 15 years back.

But once Quartararo bridged the set-up gap, Miller was relegated to second fiddle, starting with the fact he was 0.4s back in Q2 (after being 0.4s up on Friday) despite latching on to the back of Marc Marquez.

He did run well in the top 10 for most of the grand prix, Quartararo in his sights, before having to switch engine maps to cope with fading tyre life and immediately dropping like a stone. "Whether or not we messed up the calculations, it's too early to tell," he said.

Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 9th

Here is a weekend that largely followed the Bastianini KTM blueprint (which is probably a big part of the reason why he's moving on to different pastures in 2027).

He crashed trying to make Q2 on Friday, but anyway admitted he probably wasn't "ready" for a top 10 - and proved not ready again in Q1, the lap not coming together and the second of two runs a write-off.

The sprint was a struggle with a turgid start and persistent understeer, but as always, the grand prix was a step up after a tentative first 10 laps (battling with the familiar issue of bike instability when the grip is at its highest).

Despite having saved his best for last, he admitted he was "not really happy" about his weekend.

Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: DNF

He can't rank too highly because the battle for 15th against Toprak Razgatlioglu ended in a crash, but this is the best Crutchlow has looked in this MotoGP return of his so far - and, I would argue, by far.

It's not showing up in qualifying - "when they really go for it, I realise I'm 40 years old," he joked - but as a couple of the regulars toiled here, he was there to pile on the misery, while the other Hondas were less distant than ever.

'Unc still got it', as the youths allegedly say, and while a sooner-than-expected return for Johann Zarco will be cause for celebration, there will be just the tiniest smidge of frustration that Crutchlow will be stepping aside just as he's finally becoming actually competitive.

Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 6th

Bagnaia was fourth of five Ducatis here, and closer to the fifth one than the 'big three'.

He clearly felt a bit of trepidation coming into the weekend, and struggled as he expected - lamenting a familiar lack of rear grip (he said it felt like flat track) all throughout.

Perhaps 11th in qualifying was the best on offer to him - because he'd set identical times in Q1 and Q2. Both races were exercises in damage limitation from there, but while working past Quartararo in the sprint, he dropped behind an opportunistic Martin, and it turned out that both of his races would be fully defined by following the Aprilia rider around.

Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: DNF

A lot has been made of Di Giannantonio swapping to new rear aero mid-weekend, Saturday-to-Sunday, despite an already high level of performance.

And it could indeed be more than correlation that his weekend unravelled. He described the grand prix crash as puzzling given the data suggested a "photocopy" of the previous laps in all the metrics, but it was also clear he was injury-compromised after a fall in the Sunday morning warm-up - which came as he experimented with a different line while also adjusting to the new aero.

Di Giannantonio himself seemed to see the aero change as a red herring, and was keen to emphasise his pace over the weekend - which was indeed potent, but which really should have yielded more than seven points.

Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: 10th

Binder declared after Friday that, despite some struggles managing front tyre temperature, Q2 felt realistic "for the first time in a while" going into Q1 on Saturday.

But come Q1 it looked business as usual, and both of his races were thoroughly unremarkable. As he himself admitted after the sprint, "f***ing hell, I thought I had much more" - and his tyre drop-off was so steep in the grand prix that he thought he'd had an engine issue or a flat tyre.

There is something to be said for finishing both races in reasonable positions, but Binder's season continues to cry out for any kind of flashy result.

Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 14th

Largely poor but more so extremely anonymous, Rins only made an impression in two parts of the weekend - in Saturday morning practice when he crashed (ultimately inconsequential) and in the sprint when he was alone to go with the medium rear, which seemed to work out.

There was a real chasm to both Quartararo and Miller over one lap, and for once it wasn't being meaningfully recovered through race pace - which was probably inevitable at such a minimal-overtaking track.

Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: 15th

Razgatlioglu's last visit to the Sachsenring 12 years ago yielded his sole Red Bull Rookies win by 0.018s over Mir (Di Giannantonio was P8, Martin was P12, but won the other race). But if it was a high point of his season then, it was a low point here, repeatedly acknowledged by the Turk as the worst weekend of his campaign.

He just really-really struggled in all facets of the game here, losing time through the Turn 5-6-7 left-handers, hamstrung by tyre degradation and battling an apparent minor cold.

Though he had hoped a lack of established World Superbike knowledge at the track would help him get up to speed easier with a clearer mind, in the end, it sure looked like the opposite was true.

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

Points per weekend this year so far: Marini - 7.2; Zarco - 5.7; Moreira - 4.4; Mir - 2.4.

OK, yeah, points don't really matter in Honda's current situation, whatever - but this is an ungodly return for a rider who has a genuine claim for being Honda's fastest more often than not.

He could've been Honda's fastest this weekend, surely (and was in qualifying), but ultimately this was another total mess.

He was boxed at the start in the sprint due to an admittedly unorthodox line by Miller, but the pace anyway was a big negative surprise (with overheating on the rear), while on Sunday, he crashed while running behind Marini for a mind-numbing 38th grand prix DNF in four seasons at Honda.

Qualifying: 7th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 13th

Morbidelli snuck into Q2 on Friday and was, by his own admission, "lucky" to find team-mate Di Giannantonio on track and use him as a reference en route to a solid grid position.

But the positives of his weekend ended with the switch to race running - and it had already been slightly compromised anyway by then, Morbidelli picking up yet another impeding penalty, in Friday practice against Pedro Acosta (although in this case he swore he was pushing as hard as he could on his outlap and Acosta was simply much faster).

He tucked the front in the sprint while trying to make up for lost ground early on, then was badly off the pace in the grand prix - "not fast in any part of the track, not performing at all".

Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 19th Grand Prix: DNF

It was unthinkable to pick any other rider for this spot.

I have no shortage of sympathy for Vinales, who - in every weekend of his for about eight or nine months now - sounds like a rider confused and let down by his body, which had held up super well over the first 10 seasons of his MotoGP career.

On Sunday, Vinales finally admitted that "obviously I am not recovered", that he has "no idea why", that this recovery is "taking forever". But for now, this is his new normal, and he can only be judged on those merits as a MotoGP rider and contributor to his team, and that judgment is not a favourable one.

A great rider is still obviously there. Vinales went off at speed at the waterfall corner in FP1 but was still genuinely fast in that session - then brutally slow for the rest of the weekend as track grip (and seemingly stamina) caught up with him.