Italian Grand Prix 2026 MotoGP rider rankings

An Italian rider winning the Italian GP for an Italian team, one important return to action after injury, another return after years out, and sudden-yet-significant doubts over one rider's future - there was plenty to keep tabs on during MotoGP's Mugello weekend.

Amid all of that, Val Khorounzhiy did his best to pick out who actually performed best and worst for his rider rankings.

Let him know what you think of his judgements - and ask any questions - on this post in The Race Members' Club and he'll reply in his debrief later this week.

Qualifying: 4th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 7th

This weekend has all but pulverised any lingering belief I've had left that Marc Marquez can win the 2026 title. Paradoxically, he is also my rider of the weekend.

Marquez came to Mugello with the mindset of just feeling out the initial effects of his crucial shoulder surgery, and in that aspect it was a massive success as he felt no numbness or other nerve issues in the shoulder - but rather just the expected lack of strength.

But he still couldn't quite resist aiming for the stars, in that he conserved his energy on Friday (doing just enough to reach Q2), turned up the intensity in Q2 to place as the top Ducati, and in both races boxed clever with riders that by rights should have had the pace to beat him.

"If I need to sell my skin, I'll make it expensive" was his slightly curious metaphor, but its on-track representation was the lengths he went to to make Pedro Acosta's life difficult on Sunday and keep at it - before Ai Ogura nudged him out of the group (and the stamina was gone anyway).

Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: 1st

A weekend with just one substantial mistake - though one that clearly cost him points.

Bezzecchi did enough on Friday before he and Aprilia took their increasingly familiar single-lap leap overnight and he ran riot in Q2 for pole position.

It was very ably converted to 25 points on Sunday despite the challenges from Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia, but the Saturday points haul was not as it could have been - entirely as a consequence of an "evaluation mistake" in Turn 1 braking at the start.

He scrubbed off too much speed and, in his own words, "the sprint was gone". Better then than in the main race.

Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 6th

Friday suggested the makings of an 'off' weekend for Acosta, who went into the gravel on his final attempt to make Q2 - but even without that error he looked in difficulty, as the Arrabbiatas were coming up and the time loss there would've probably stopped him from getting into the top 10.

But piece by piece the weekend was recovered, even if on paper the end result is nothing special.

Given the limitations in bike stability and top speed - the KTM looked desperately outmatched against Marquez's Ducati on the main straight - and the aero damage from contact with Ogura that Acosta didn't look particularly culpable for, the two race results add up to a good rescue job.

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

Good track position in practice and qualifying - in terms of reference points - was clearly the chief building block to Moreira's superb weekend. He'd strategised it well, too - telling his crew to send him out behind some local rider because they know the best lines at Mugello.

A "perfect" start in the sprint set up a brief podium cameo - so the rest of that race was about going backwards, and the front tyre had been used up.

He seemed to adopt a more measured approach in the grand prix, culminating in a last-lap overtake on Brad Binder, but ultimately both races finished with Moreira as the lead Honda - a serious achievement for a rookie who has looked good but hadn't really led the line for his employer until now.

Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 5th

Little things conspired to deny Di Giannantonio on a weekend in which he was probably the only rider with the pure performance to give the factory Aprilias anything at all to worry about.

The irritants of a stomach bug and a finger injury from Barcelona proved lesser than what really caused him to underdeliver in terms of grid position, which appeared to be a mixture of suboptimal track position and the technical issue in the Saturday morning practice.

A good start (seemingly aided by something Ducati brought for him) made an impressive sprint possible, but it wasn't replicated on Sunday - and making things worse was Moreira cutting across him, leading to Di Giannantonio scrubbing off too much speed and ending up boxed in.

His grand prix was strong from there, as he managed the front tyre temperature while picking his way through, but the pace was better than the end result.

Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: 2nd

Six crashes across the grand prix weekend and test at Barcelona had put the fear into Martin, and the last of those left him banged up and with foot ligament damage.

It was a lot to overcome, but by and large it was overcome, even if team-mate Bezzecchi again had more in qualifying - and by and large looked the stronger of the two.

But Martin played his usual start card well on both days, before both times having to settle in behind fellow Aprilia riders that he couldn't quite match.

If you can't beat them, finishing right behind will do.

Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 3rd

This was an emotional home podium for Bagnaia, and he deserved it for the grace he's carried himself with through this (ongoing) frequently painful denouement to his time as a Ducati rider.

To read more into it, though, seems presumptuous. This is a good place for Bagnaia and his style, as his Friday result and own comments corroborated, but he took a step back on Saturday - with a Turn 10 mistake in Q2 hurting his grid position and an "unbelievable" bad start all but writing off the sprint.

He was combative and then clever in the grand prix, accepting the works Aprilias were out of his league and playing his cards superbly against Ogura in the end. But the fact Di Giannantonio was five seconds back as Bagnaia led the race, yet ended the grand prix right on the #63's heels, tells me this is still not the Bagnaia of old.

Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 9th

Fernandez's weekend played out under a cloud of stomach sickness and, more dramatically, sudden significant doubts over his employment status for 2027.

And amid that he blew hot and cold, though his weekend was better than that sounds.

Missing the top 10 on Friday (a red flag meant a compromised front tyre warm-up cycle, and he made a mistake in the third sector) was corrected emphatically on Saturday morning, and his sprint performance was the best he's ever looked as a MotoGP rider.

The grand prix? Fernandez should have been there or thereabouts but for one reason or another didn't downshift to the gear he wanted into Turn 1, so got the corner all wrong and torpedoed his podium chances.

He was fast enough to recover reasonably, though also barged Luca Marini out of the way in the process to earn a one-position penalty.

Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: 8th

You can no longer immediately tell just from seeing him walk around that Aldeguer is coming off a brutal leg injury in the off-season - but he's still not 100%, and Mugello was always going to be a serious test. But it was passed fairly emphatically.

The "best Friday of this season" was the right way to start, and he qualified well despite "not the best lap" in Q2.

Usually a strong Aldeguer qualifying is very ominous for races, but it didn't quite work out that way. He had a slightly tardy start in the sprint and checked up for a trajectory overlap with Di Giannantonio, so lost more ground and had to work his way back through.

On Sunday, the first lap worked out, but he appeared hamstrung by having to battle the more straightline-capable Ducati GP26 of Marquez (versus his Ducati GP25) and anyway chewed through the front tyre, so just had to see things out.

Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: 19th Grand Prix: DNF

Thrown in at the deep end after no starts for three years and just a 40-lap private test at Misano to check whether he was still up for it, Crutchlow made up the numbers - but brought a welcome level of enthusiasm and appreciation to the gig.

His bike was not yet tailored enough to his liking (given the short-notice nature of the whole affair) and while he's a fit guy, the MotoGP-level muscle mass just isn't there right now. This Honda, he admitted repeatedly, is "way better than me" currently, and the changes of direction are sapping massive laptime - though braking is apparently OK.

He built the weekend up as he should have - but suffered an apparent muscle tear early on Sunday that all but guaranteed a grand prix DNF (though he stretched things out to 11 laps ultimately, joking that he did manage a full race across the sprint and the grand prix).

He's expected to be back in the saddle at Balaton Park this weekend.

Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: DNF

Rins was the clear standard-bearer for Yamaha this weekend - something that basically hasn't happened before in its current four-bike set-up.

Though his Q2 entry on Friday was tow-assisted he did seem to have tangibly more than his stablemates, as evidenced by his actual Q2 lap - a very reasonable 1m45.0s that left him "devastated" upon arriving to the pitbox and seeing he was last.

He hounded Binder through the sprint but could find no way past, then tucked the front out of 15th - "same brake pressure, same line, same angle" as usual, he insisted - on Sunday.

Even if he had seen out the weekend as Yamaha's clear top performer, he'd made it clear earlier any such accomplishment was bringing him close to no joy at all.

Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 4th

Ogura was Q2-marginal on Friday despite a handful of corners in which he was "misunderstanding when to hit the apex and how". He should have had enough to go through Q1 the following day, but just didn't put the sectors together.

It's ultimately just not great when you're 13th on the grid and the other Aprilias are 1-2-3, but at least Ogura is proving very adept as damage-controlling these situations.

He was maybe one corner away from the podium on Sunday in the end. But his charge also included a clumsy barge into Marquez (that he did sound a bit remorseful for) and a no-less clumsy clash with Acosta after going wide at San Donato.

Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: 16th

Razgatlioglu was a contender for last place in these rankings for much of the weekend: out of sorts on Friday, slow in Q1, crashing after post-Q1 practice starts (the bike "fully destroyed") as he laboured desperately to disengage the start device.

And then his weekend came alive, first with an improved sprint showing and then with a change initiated by crew chief Alberto Giribuola that delivered "a completely different bike" on corner entries, enabling Razgatlioglu to take profit from the engine braking.

He parlayed that into a genuine points challenge on Sunday, but came up short via two minor errors - one mid-race, another in breaching track limits at the very end.

Qualifying: 15th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 12th

A truly 'conventional' weekend continues to evade Mir. This one featured an immediate retirement from the sprint due to excessive vibrations caused by what Mir theorised was some sort of heat-related component failure.

The rest of it was a bit more normal but unfortunately this also just wasn't a very strong round for Mir. The single-lap pace was thoroughly unremarkable, and two suboptimal starts made things harder - while Mir also made it clear he adopted an "it was not worth the risk to do something more here" philosophy that could've served his points tally well in other weekends.

Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 15th

Miller felt like the median Yamaha rider for most of the weekend, through both the single-lap and race portions.

Both Friday practice (which included a San Donato crash) and Q1 were fine but not at Rins's level, and in the sprint a Turn 10 mistake dropped him out of a fight up ahead that anyway was never going to yield any points.

Team-mate Razgatlioglu's track limits breach gave him a point on Sunday, after Miller himself had lost valuable ground running wide in battle with Franco Morbidelli.

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

I'm not convinced Binder would've made the top 10 on Friday if he had got a fair chance. He never did - thanks to technical issues and a forced last-second switch to the "little bit different" second bike.

Q1 showed there was OK single-lap speed in Binder's locker here. For once, the race performance let him down - "just missing pace, just not able to roll fast enough, especially through sector three, missing some edge grip and missing a bit of speed onto the main straight".

He spent the majority of both races in clear 'hanging on' mode - successfully in the sprint for no points (he fought off Rins), less successfully in the grand prix for some points (he let Moreira through but not the other Hondas).

Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: 13th

Marini's weekend looked all over the place starting with a "really disastrous" Friday - during which he also hinted at a dodgy rear tyre - and peaking with a grid penalty in Saturday practice for a too-abrupt pit entry/slowdown right in front of Franco Morbidelli.

It was a penalty Marini had felt unwarranted, though replays seem to support the stewards' decision.

In any case, the penalty only applied to the grand prix and yet his grand prix looked stronger than the sprint - and he probably would've been the top Honda in the end if not for being pushed out by Fernandez early in the race and losing a chunk of laptime and three places.

Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: 17th

There is not all that much to say about Vinales's current MotoGP form without being privy to the nitty-gritty of his physical condition right now. His only task is convincing Tech3 boss Guenther Steiner that he can get back to his normal MotoGP-level fitness.

Vinales is eyeing Brno - 11 months from his original shoulder injury at the Sachsenring - as the time to be 100% fit again. He still looked far off that at Mugello but it is a famously physical track, one that left Vinales feeling that "the bike rides me everywhere" when in time attack mode.

Even within that context, there was a strange performance drop between Friday practice and Q1 on Saturday morning. And the two races were nothing much in the end, seemingly treated by Vinales as just extra practice sessions.

Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: 19th

If this was a 'battle of the stand-ins' between him and Crutchlow, Pirro won it handily, of course - as was to be expected given his Ducati tester role and affinity for Mugello. Nothing more was really on offer, though a couple of times it looked like he may nip on the heels of a Yamaha straggler here and there.

He admitted to being "affected" by a crash in practice, but ultimately delivered a much better sprint-and-GP combo than at Buriram.

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

There was a strong whiff of surrender emanating from Quartararo's weekend. His previous rounds in 2026, against the backdrop of a widely known impending split with Yamaha, defended him well against any such accusation - but not this one.

"Very slow" and surprised by it at his "favourite track", Quartararo seemed to take the Friday crash at Materassi as a warning and spent the rest of the weekend in crash-avoidance mode.

There were no particular signs of his usual prodigious pace that tends to separate him from the other Yamahas, and he slowly trundled out of the fight for the singular point that was made available to the M1s on Sunday.

Qualifying: 11th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: DNF

By rights should be last in these rankings - but a little too fast, from the very outset, for me to condemn this as a truly terrible weekend.

Unusually for Bastianini he seemed more comfortable on new tyres than used at the outset, but he never really got to run them used in either race - after a stellar Friday and reasonable enough qualifying.

He caught himself out in the sprint trying to stay with Aldeguer, crashing on a wide approach to Scarperia that Bastianini said was a normal line for him but not the best for mitigating crash risk.

The grand prix crash was also at Scarperia but further into the corner, and seemed to come as more of a surprise.

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

Morbidelli's weekend looked genuinely promising across Friday - and Saturday morning practice, where he's convinced he had showed the third-best pace.

But Q2 looked a little suboptimal and was then rendered irrelevant by a pair of brutal starts (ninth-to-16th in the sprint, ninth-to-17th in the main race).

That was obviously unsalvageable, even without the sprint also bringing a crash while trying to manage temperatures in the pack.