Outside of all the discussion over whether Balaton Park is fit for MotoGP or not, it certainly presented the class's riders with a very particular set of demands across the 2025 Hungarian Grand Prix.
And a lot of those riders, more than usual, were found wanting.
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Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 1st GP: 1st
Just like he did exiting Turn 1 on Sunday, Marc Marquez left the door wide open to someone else taking the number one spot in these rankings by his adventurous entry into Turn 2 that led to the Marco Bezzecchi contact - which so easily could've been race-ruining.
He said it was no overtaking attempt but instead just him being caught out by Bezzecchi scrubbing off too much speed (which Bezzecchi himself admitted), but in any case accepted it as "my mistake".
There were no other real mistakes to speak of, and ultimately no real case to put anyone here. Marquez is humiliating the rest of the MotoGP grid this season - and while those on other bikes at least have that as an excuse, and a bit of plausible deniability, some of his Ducati peers must be dreaming and wishing for this 'reality check' season to end.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 4th GP: 5th
Luca Marini said being at a new track played to the strengths of both Honda - which could rely on its engineering capabilities without leaning on past data - and himself as a keen learner. He was proven right, although this was also clearly just a suitable layout for the RC213V.
In any case, only Marini looked like he'd maximised that. Though not spectacular over one lap, he outqualified team-mate Joan Mir, then did well to hold station in the sprint.
Enea Bastianini's crash and return to the track in the Turns 12-13 chicane cost Marini two positions on Sunday as he took avoiding action, but he impressed by getting one of those positions back at Franco Morbidelli's expense.
Just a really tidy, really complete weekend, even if I'm still waiting for a Marini grand prix in which he's the clear fastest Honda rider.
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 7th GP: 3rd
It was so, so close between second and third here.
Undisturbed by missing Q2 on Friday, Bezzecchi nailed qualifying on a weekend he really needed to - with the track not too conducive to overtaking and his pace anyway "not that good", "quite a bit slower" than Austria last week.
He was completely blameless in his sprint being compromised at Turn 1 - and at least did overtake Pol Espargaro if not Mir - then did a good job on Sunday, just without the pace to take on Marquez or Pedro Acosta.
Third in the championship looks increasingly realistic as he's outscored his good friend Pecco Bagnaia in four of the last five weekends and now needs to make up just 31 points.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 9th GP: 4th
A rider normally doesn't place that high when they qualify six tenths of a second off their team-mate, but every other part of Jorge Martin's weekend was very good - and qualifying is clearly not easy to get right straight away on the Aprilia RS-GP.
He was the grid's action man in both races, to the point where he felt he alone disproved the notion Balaton wasn't "good for racing" - and Sunday's charge was particularly impressive, set up by an excellent round-the-outside approach into Turn 1 at the start.
Just very-very-very encouraging.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 2nd GP: 15th
Complaining about a familiar issue of struggling to exploit the extra grip of a soft rear tyre, Fabio Di Giannantonio was trundling towards another lost weekend when he saved it in Q1 by beating Brad Binder on second-best laptime tiebreak, then keeping things clean in Q2 for a front row.
Given that Fabio Quartararo's Turn 1 entry affected him, too, he did very well to hunt down and overtake VR46 team-mate Morbidelli back on the run to Turn 5 to set up his second place in the sprint.
A yet-unspecified technical issue wrecked his Sunday, and his pace on the spare bike with the "wrong tyres" suggested it would've been at worst an easy top-four finish.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 17th GP: 2nd
Fantastic Friday, fantastic Sunday, disastrous Saturday.
Two out of three ain't bad, or so they say, but it felt like more was on offer for Acosta here - as, having topped Friday's running despite an off-throttle highside, he looked one of just two riders (more on the other later) who could've maybe had something for Marquez here.
For Acosta, the win bid fell apart with a qualifying crash - "the biggest mistake of the weekend", which also denied him his favoured spec of forks.
Quartararo forced him wide at the start on Saturday, so it's hard to get too worked up about his crash after a "desperate" bid to make a move on Martin stick. And he more than made up for it on Sunday, anyway.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 10th GP: 8th
Pol Espargaro's second appearance of 2025 - again as stand-in for Maverick Vinales, who he hopes to see back in action next time out at Barcelona - wasn't quite as impressive as his lights-out Brno showing in July. But it was still plenty impressive - to the point where rumours during the weekend of a full-time return in another paddock felt like the most natural thing in the world.
With the benefit of prior MotoGP experience at the track (a single test day in much hotter conditions), he said he was being hampered here by having to do some test work in certain crucial sessions of the weekend - but stayed competitive throughout, save for a weak Q2.
Beating Pecco Bagnaia on the final lap was the cherry on top, and further evidence Espargaro could still absolutely do a job as a MotoGP rider - though he freely admitted he has no interest in that as it's "too stressful".
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 3rd GP: 6th
Two crashes in the opening session sent alarm bells ringing, but Morbidelli produced a tidy, solid weekend from then on - save for a minor bit of penalty angst in the end.
He was decent in qualifying and the sprint, then had a fairly familiar Morbidelli race in the main event - not helped by the bold choice of the soft rear that didn't seem to pay off.
Cutting the chicane while defending from Marini didn't impress the stewards much, though Morbidelli felt he was being punished for "caring about Luca's safety" - as he believes he could've taken the corner as normal and had the Honda rider off as a result.
From my point of view, the sanction looked marginal but understandable.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 5th GP: 16th
There was a total of 10 laptimes in the 1m37s range recorded during the grand prix on Sunday. Marc Marquez was responsible for six - the other four were set by rookie Fermin Aldeguer after crashing.
That's super cool, but it's also what makes the crash tear-your-hair-out frustrating to begin with - even if it's part of the learning process and at least Aldeguer is not doing it in every round.
He was already super fast on Friday, but just didn't nail qualifying and didn't brake hard enough into Turn 1 in the sprint, keeping the holeshot device engaged and costing him important positions in the next turns.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 18th GP: 7th
Brad Binder was, in his own words, "useless" on Friday but "woke up" on Saturday - and was unlucky to miss out on Q2 by literally 0.000s.
An uncharacteristic wheelspin-laden start in the sprint turned into a torn-up fairing as he arrived at the Turn 1 logjam and got caught out, with a pitstop subsequently required as the damage got worse.
Sunday was better despite a rear "hopping" issue that puzzled him. In that context, he felt to still finish seventh was the best result available "and still pretty decent". This is true - but, as Binder always acknowledges, he keeps playing a part in making his weekends difficult.
Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 15th GP: 11th
Ai Ogura places way too high for his actual performance level - he felt on Friday that he could do a reasonably fast lap but was too inconsistent, and the fast lap in question was then nowhere to be found in Q1, which conditioned both of his races.
But the pace was fine, progress was made, and overall he just did his job - staying on and bringing the Aprilia RS-GP home at respectable speed on a weekend where many, many other riders made messes of varying degrees.
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 6th GP: DNF
After a stellar Austria, this was a return to normal 2025 form for Mir - who will argue he's been unlucky again but also definitely didn't make his own luck.
A strong Friday was followed up by a Q2 where he left a better grid position on the table. This was negated in the sprint by the chaos Quartararo had brought to Turn 1 - but an error did cost Mir a position at the finish relative to Aldeguer.
He hinted at a bad rear tyre on Sunday, but his race was already torpedoed by a bad start (though this may have been related), a tentative entry into Turn 1 and being forced into a clumsy line through Turn 2 by a bit of a KTM concertina effect on his inside.
So it was long ruined by the time he went down a few moments after Raul Fernandez had done at the same corner.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 14th GP: 12th
Miguel Oliveira was too far back from Pramac team-mate Jack Miller in Q1, but even with that had the 'least bad' weekend among the Yamaha riders.
He rode an OK sprint after a poor start - triggered by what he suggested may have been a clutch issue of some kind - then was reasonably competitive on Sunday, though blotted his copybook with a penultimate-lap error that let Ogura through for 12th.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: DNF GP: 10th
Quartararo's mistake at Turn 1 in the sprint - which he put down to it being the dirty part of the track, but which the rider on the same patch of track behind him, Johann Zarco, did not make - colours the whole weekend.
It's a real shame because the rest of it was so strong - from dragging his bike into the top 10 on Friday, to a second-row spot that Quartararo "didn't think is real" but instead felt was just the consequence of others underperforming.
He says he was too cautious into Turn 1 on Sunday after Saturday's error, but should've still been in a good position - only to be hindered more than most by the Marquez/Bezzecchi concertina up ahead, and then compromised further by the long lap penalty from the sprint.
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: DNF GP: DNF
The good? The pace. The bad? Basically everything else.
Bastianini was maybe at his most competitive yet at KTM, or at least certainly continued the impressive trend seen across Brno and the Red Bull Ring, but came out of the weekend with nothing to show for it but more penalties and a big scare.
He was thwacked by Quartararo at Turn 1 in the sprint so gets a little bit of grace over his equally-egregious subsequent crash with Zarco - to which Bastianini cited a locked ride height device and further bike damage as mitigation, though the MotoGP stewards seemingly found this irrelevant to the dynamics of the incident.
With a double long lap hanging over him, it's understandable why he pushed hard and crashed early on Sunday, but still less than ideal - although the outcome of the crash itself was pretty close to ideal given everyone avoided him after he'd found himself spat out onto the track at the second part of the chicane.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 16th GP: 13th
This was a very, very anonymous Alex Rins weekend, his only real appearance in even a supporting role coming when he had to take to the gravel in the sprint as Bastianini speared off Zarco.
He felt hamstrung by "a really bad strategy" on Friday but was unlikely to get into the top 10 then, and had no real shot in Q1, before also struggling on fresh tyres on Sunday.
The pace picked up further into the race, but as for why it did, Rins described it as "my question for the engineers".
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 11th GP: DNF
Largely a non-factor through the single-lap portions of the weekend, Raul Fernandez felt he couldn't utilise the grip of a fresh tyre but gradually got more comfortable with the Trackhouse Aprilia session by session.
But after a fine enough sprint he went off early on Sunday while in a promising position, losing the front in a botched entry into Turn 5.
He needs to make sure that this is just a blip in the recent Raulissance, or whatever you want to call it.
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 12th GP: DNF
With matters of his future looming large in the background, Miller had a difficult-to-assess weekend - in which he seemed credibly the second-fastest Yamaha but just didn't deliver.
It started with a needless Friday sanction stemming from his argument with Alex Marquez, then culminated with a poor grand prix - after an OK sprint that, unfortunately, isn't where the Yamaha tends to score the points.
There was already an error in the sprint - one but "one too many" - in going off at Turn 12 and letting Fernandez past, then two crashes on Sunday that left Miller "devastated" and apologetic to Pramac, but also scratching his head as to the causes given he felt both corner entries were slower than prior.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 13th GP: 9th
Bagnaia isn't last in these rankings - he kept it too clean for that - but spiritually this was a very 'last-place' kind of weekend.
Limited and uncertain on corner entry as he has been all season with the Ducati GP25, Bagnaia was too slow on Friday (he still had a Q2 shot but missed it with a "little mess" in the final sector) and on the wrong end of a close Q1 battle.
He made no impact of note on the sprint, then compromised his grand prix by earning a long lap for cutting a corner.
Overtaking Espargaro on the final lap only to go off and immediately give the position back was the final insult of a brutal weekend, but Bagnaia actually took it as a sign of progress - saying that he was making mistakes because he actually felt he could push the bike like he wanted thanks to a major set-up change.
That sounds ridiculous to me - but perhaps a flourish in the upcoming races will back up his optimism.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 8th GP: 14th
Marquez wanted a normal weekend for once coming into Balaton, but didn't get one, largely through his own efforts and struggles.
Fast over one lap early on but lacking pace, he gave himself extra work to do with a silly penalty incurred on Friday (slowing down too much to gesticulate towards Di Giannantonio, who in the end knew nothing about it), then failed to nail a lap in Q2.
The sprint was fine, the grand prix immediately ruined by an early crash. He was just "not at the level", Marquez admitted, but he was hopeful and confident of a "small reset", with tracks that suit him better coming up soon.
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: DNF GP: DNF
There's something strange going on with Zarco, who suggested Honda has 'frozen' his spec so that he has bike continuity and can deliver the results - but who also doesn't sound totally convinced the factory Hondas aren't quicker now. Unavailable to Zarco, for example, is the new chassis that Marini in particular exploited well here - though Marini insists it is no big step forward.
In any case, a stagnant bike spec alone cannot explain Zarco's weekend. He was both slow and on edge, lacking control of the bike on acceleration, crashing on Friday but admitting a top 10 laptime was in any case well out of reach.
He was blameless in his sprint exit, but should've brought it home on Sunday for at least a handful of points instead of crashing out while being chased by Ogura.
Zarco says his feeling has been off since the start of the Red Bull Ring weekend, and indeed these have been two really rough rounds.
