The leading trio in MotoGP's Portuguese Grand Prix at Portimao had much more performance than the rest - and that is reflected in our rankings, even if it was quite close between third and fourth.
And it was also very close between first and second...
Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 1st
His good friend Pecco Bagnaia said after the finish that Marco Bezzecchi clearly deserves to come out on top - which is now all but certain to happen - in their fight for third place in the standings.
That seems inarguable, with his Portimao performance remarkable only for how unremarkable it felt - another assured pole, another controlled win.
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Bezzecchi had to play the percentages in the sprint against Pedro Acosta and Alex Marquez to ensure he brought home points, but dug deep with his crew overnight - with set-up changes and apparently a tweak to his line through the final corner - to ensure a comfortable Sunday, foreshadowed already by a dominant warm-up that had left Marquez going 'uh-oh'.
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: 3rd
There was a lot of hype coming into the weekend about this finally being the time for Acosta's first win, and that hype went unrealised. And frankly, I don't really care - because it's clear the KTM star man is in red-hot form and doing everything he needs to be doing.
Again, a cut above his KTM peers over a single lap, he leaned on his and KTM's first-sector strengths well in the sprint to cover for a final-sector deficit - though ultimately couldn't quite see off Marquez. Sunday, comparatively, looked like a race that was always going to end in third place.
That is no slight on Acosta, who can now realistically target fourth place in the championship come Valencia.
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 2nd
For the amount of performance he had, Marquez looked kind of untidy at times - in the needless Q2 crash that compromised his grid position, and in the much lesser error in the sprint that allowed Acosta to get a bit close for comfort late on.
By Sunday, Bezzecchi had stolen a march, and Marquez nearly made his own race really complicated by taking too much out of the front tyre in fruitless pursuit.
All of that, however, against the backdrop of him being head and shoulders above the rest of the Ducati riders all weekend. That does count for a lot.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: 6th
It was very, very close between Fabio Quartararo and Marquez for third in the rankings, and ultimately Marquez only gets the nod for the race pace edge he had over the other Ducatis - that Quartararo didn't quite have over the other Yamahas.
But it's unreasonable to ask more of Quartararo's weekend. Unhappy on Friday, he thrived on Saturday with the power output turned down a bit to stabilise the bike. He then rode a sensible race on Sunday.
Could it have been better if not for the Turn 5 error that let Brad Binder through? Probably not, especially given that Quartararo himself pointed out that while that error stood out on the broadcast, it was one of the many mishaps and moments he was having on the bike trying to hammer the brakes to stay ahead of the superior KTM.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 9th
Johann Zarco needed this and Honda needed to see this from him.
The upgrades are still clearly not difference-makers for him - his strong Friday showing came on an older-spec bike due to issues with his primary machine, and while he has more of an understanding of why he isn't fully benefitting from Honda's steps forward, it doesn't sound like there's a definitive solution.
Two actual Portimao races from Joan Mir would have almost certainly lowered Zarco's ranking. But for the so-so level of confidence he has right now, Zarco was unmistakably productive in both races and clearly has something to build upon.
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: 10th
Should Pol Espargaro really be ahead of KTM regular Binder in this given Binder beat him in both races, handily so on Sunday?
Yes. Yes already, because this is just his fifth weekend of Espargaro's stand-in 2025 campaign, and double yes because of the mental load of returning to the track that back in 2023 effectively brought upon the end of his full-time career with the horrific crash that wrecked his final season as a full-time MotoGP rider.
Admitting that he's now feeling the fatigue from his stand-in role, Espargaro crashed on Friday but took heart in being able to bring the bike back into the pits (which he saw as important mentally), then saw out a competitive weekend.
An apparent minor error cost him a points shot in the sprint, though he was still pretty close, and the recovery from early contact with Franco Morbidelli on Sunday was a solid one.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: 4th
This was very good but overly rowdy, which also describes Fermin Aldeguer's rookie season as a whole.
His pace was eye-catching on Friday, especially as this was a track he'd worried about, but exploiting the peak of the soft rear tyre in qualifying was the big hurdle again - and what progress he'd made off the line in the sprint he undid by being too conservative on the brakes into Turn 1, which he said was a consequence of missing out on a practice start due to weather.
He was fast once unleashed both over the shorter and the longer race distances. He was also just a bit naughty, barging past Jack Miller twice and Binder once across the two races. The first Miller move and the sole Binder move were both in the publicly available footage - the former at the very, very limit, the latter even more so, with the lack of corrective action by the stewards' panel a surprise.
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 5th
If Binder can't crack the qualifying code - and with this year's KTM RC16 he has now basically run out of time on that one - he has to be making up for it in race trim, and he did that this weekend.
There's some mitigation for his relatively uncompetitive Q1 in that he had to scrap a run and swap bikes because, apparently, something fell off. But there was also brutal time loss in the final sector with chatter through the final corner.
But he was good in both races, making impressive progress and finishing about where he should've. Holding Aldeguer off was probably a lost cause anyway even without Aldeguer's aggressive move - which Binder took no issue with, despite it making his life harder through aero damage.
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 15th
Nicolo Bulega's ranking is quite high when you consider that none of his main sessions were particularly clean - he went off chasing after Enea Bastianini in Q1, he crashed in the sprint, and he had an off while in pursuit of Miguel Oliveira in the grand prix.
All of this was, by and large, attributed to the adaptation from the Pirelli front braking to the Michelin front braking.
Given the scope of that task, and the fact that the prep test he'd got at Jerez was rain-affected and so mileage was limited, ninth here feels almost unacceptably harsh. I hate it, for a rider who took a huge step here towards joining the MotoGP grid in 2027.
He was fast. That was kind of the only thing that mattered.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 11th Grand Prix: 7th
Ai Ogura claimed he'd figured something out for how to pull off better Fridays - namely dialling in his braking references by overshooting corners and then taking steps back rather than 'undershooting' then and building up.
Friday was the highlight of his weekend, which is not to say it was a bad weekend.
He lamented, in his words, not being "awake" enough in Q1 relative to others after the rain-affected preceding practice - but both races were solid, Sunday's particularly so.
Nineteen seconds back from Aprilia's race-winner Bezzecchi in the grand prix is not particularly exciting. But after he'd come to the track with a bit of trepidation, yet then found that it seems to suit him more on a MotoGP bike than in Moto2 or Moto3, Ogura sounded happy enough with the yield.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: DNF
Mir believed after the weekend that, while the top three were far ahead, the rest of the grid was potentially there for the taking for his Honda had it just held up through either race distance.
That's easy to say, of course, but Mir's recent race pace deserves the benefit of the doubt - though his probability of staying on the bike while extracting that race pace is another matter.
He did nothing wrong this weekend. Strong on Friday, positive if not necessarily perfect through Q2, then robbed of a sprint by a clutch issue and of a grand prix by another unspecified failure.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 8th
The relatively lowly ranking feels like an exaggeration. Fabio Di Giannantonio's weekend mostly suffered as a result of a subpar Q2 - which he attributed to running set-up changes that he couldn't quite properly test in the rain-affected preceding practice - and a particularly timid first handful of corners in Sunday's race.
But that combination meant an 18-second deficit to top Ducati Marquez at the finish, and it's kind of difficult to ignore.
The sprint was good, and he should finish sixth in the standings now, but Di Giannantonio himself is well aware this isn't the yield expected of a factory Ducati rider with grand prix-winning pedigree.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 12th
Starting with a crash on Friday triggered by rain, this was a deceptively eventful Miller weekend - even if things look pretty normal on the results sheet.
Any chance of Quartararo-like heroics in the sprint was immediately dashed by Miller getting distracted by Mir's clutch drama next to him and having a so-so start, which then put him in Aldeguer's firing line (twice on the opening lap).
He found the bike a handful on Sunday and it was a pretty anonymous 25 laps, but he was at least the second-best Yamaha again, if not by a lot.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: 11th
This was another weekend where Luca Marini really could have done with being in Q2, a (ultimately unsuccessful) quest complicated by his first 'unassisted' crash of the MotoGP season on Friday.
There was a hint of a sprint bounce-back but ultimately he couldn't stay mistake-free. But he also indicated afterwards that the pace just wasn't really there, and Sunday underlined this - Marini was "really uncomfortable" in the first half of the race, then didn't really have the opportunity or the speed to recover ground.
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: 18th
Portimao did not treat Bastianini particularly well - he had just the one good session, and while his one good session was actually really good, it was completely ruined competitively before he could express his strengths.
Before that, he had been limited again on Friday - and also unhappy with the run plan - and subdued in the sprint, finding the hard front less compliant and durable than he'd expected.
But his pace on Sunday was clearly there to do a Binder-like race. Yet contact in the Morbidelli-triggered Turn 5 melee, seemingly with Ogura's Aprilia, damaged his fairing and sent him into the pits, before he rejoined to run around with the leaders at two laps down.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: 13th
Alex Rins needs to see the back of this inline-four Yamaha M1 already because no flourish or uptick in form has lasted in the past couple of years - and there was no flourish at all at Portimao.
Unimpressed with the bike here like all of his peers, he confirmed his best lap on Friday was clean but just slow - and was once up against it due to grid position.
An apparent clutch issue and near-collision with Lorenzo Savadori rendered the sprint an immediate write-off, while the grand prix was reasonable - he finished right behind Miller despite trailing him by five positions on the opening lap - but difficult to get all that excited about.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 14th
The normally quite stoic Oliveira was clearly worn down by the emotion of what may be his final home grand prix in the premier class, and in the adoration of the local crowd the actual results felt totally irrelevant.
Which is good, because they weren't good. He was nowhere on Friday, partly due to coming into the pits for rain when he shouldn't have (as it stopped almost immediately), then didn't catch the eye on Saturday nor Sunday - though clearly improved day by day, ultimately ending up there or thereabout with the non-Quartararo Yamahas.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: 16th
Savadori should ideally maybe rank higher given he went about his business at this "beautiful but really extreme" track with minimal fuss and incident. He was seemingly kept out of the Sunday points battle (which anyway he probably wasn't going to succeed in) by the rawness of his developmental Aprilia RS-GP.
He'll anyway take Bezzecchi's 25 points over one point for himself any day of the week.
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: DNF
If you told me after Friday that Bagnaia's weekend was about to be a 37-pointer from pole, then - apart from having to reconcile with the existence of time travel or clairvoyance - I would not have been shocked.
Problem is, if you then told me 'psych, it's a P8 and a DNF', that's equally un-shocking. Maybe even less shocking.
Bagnaia didn't nail Q2, wasting the peak of his tyre on a lap ruined at Turn 10 though he did at least salvage a good grid position in the end. He then really didn't nail the sprint. "I didn't work well" was his own admission, referring to excessive tyre consumption.
Sunday looked better, good-but-not-great, when he crashed out under no pressure.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: DNF
Morbidelli had what he described as a straightforward first practice, then took a big step back in performance - feeling "awful" with new rubber, and not helped by a crash in the second session - until around warm-up time.
That should've presumably given him a chance of salvaging a disappointing weekend, but that chance went begging with a clumsy entry into Turn 5 in the pack that eventually led to the end of his race.
He had got some grief in Q1 for launching his way past Oliveira on a fast lap, but hadn't really done anything wrong. But the criticism on Sunday was, per every available indication, well warranted.
The crash required a trip to the hospital for checks, but he was cleared of any substantial injuries.
Qualifying: 21st Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 17th
A wholly unremarkable - not in a particularly good way - weekend apart from two things.
The first? The terrifying wheelie, MotoGP's scariest in decades, that Somkiat Chantra popped on Friday when going over the hill in the wrong gear, with the electronics not there to bail him out but thankfully no major consequences.
The second? An immediate exit from the sprint, triggered by an apparent clutch issue.
He did get a grand prix in, but a very-very slow one, Chantra just finding the bike a handful all round. Hopefully he'll sign off from MotoGP on a better note next weekend.
Qualifying: N/A Sprint: DNS Grand Prix: DNS
An opening-practice crash ended Raul Fernandez's weekend before it really began, with a partial shoulder dislocation and a hospital visit for checks.
Though he returned to the track after and appeared competitive enough, the amount of discomfort meant it was deemed medically imprudent to continue.
