San Marino Grand Prix MotoGP rider rankings 2026

The San Marino Grand Prix weekend at Misano was dominated by Spaniards - and so are our MotoGP rider rankings for the weekend. But which of the two clear standouts leads the way this time?

What do you think of Val's judgements? Let him know in the comments on this post in The Race Members' Club and he'll answer in his Q&A later this week.

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

For the second weekend running the 2027 Ducati line-up monopolises the top two in these rankings - and this time Marquez gets the nod, again by the narrowest of margins.

He had claimed on Friday he would "sign right now" for a podium and that Marco Bezzecchi was the favourite - and whether that was 'mind games-y' or not, the claim did seem backed up by what was going on on track.

But a bet on the medium rear combined with another great approach to Turn 1 at the start won Marquez the sprint - and he controlled the main race after Bezzecchi's exit.

At a track which doles out a real punishment to the right side of the body - where Marquez is compromised - he was the top Ducati in every session.

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

The standards remain sky high for Acosta, who got his customary Friday crash out of the way early on and subsequently was again on another level compared to his fellow KTM riders.

He lamented losing ground in a Fermin Aldeguer battle in the sprint - in which he claimed both were doing "stupid s**t" - and was generally unhappy with the stopping performance of his RC16.

But a "disaster"-esque warm-up on Sunday was followed up by a fantastic ride in the grand prix, delivering another podium that had never felt on the cards for KTM.

Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 4th

Aldeguer had a technical issue on Friday that cost him a real shot at Q2, so did it the hard way on Saturday morning - powering to third on the grid in one of his best qualifying efforts yet in MotoGP.

He got roughed up a bit on the sprint, by Acosta but particularly by Raul Fernandez, and then coped much better in the main race with the field more spread out and the pace clearly strong.

Given Misano is so demanding physically, and Aldeguer is still injury-limited (and also riding an old bike), this was a triumph of a weekend.

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

Marini's best weekend of the year, the high point of it a Q2 run to a spectacular sixth on the grid - which he did admit was probably aided by yellow-flag timings and others messing up.

Never one for excessive modesty, he described himself as "every time faster than my team-mates" this weekend - and the two races bore that out.

He was "giving everything" on Sunday to keep Fabio Di Giannantonio at bay - laughing that "for sure he hates me!" given the defensive lines, though Di Giannantonio saw no issue with it and was full of praise for his friend. Ultimately, that defensive effort was for naught, a late-race vibration in the rear forcing Marini to simply drag the bike to the finish.

Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 2nd

Super-fast again, the younger Marquez had performance for a front-row start and should have been in the mix to snipe a win.

A two-crash Q2, in which he was wrong-footed by adjusting to a new soft tyre after running used rubber in preceding practice, was a hammer blow to his hopes of a truly amazing result.

Still, he recovered well in both races, so well that many went away after Sunday's contest wondering whether he really should have worked his way past his brother and put himself in position to win.

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

This was so nearly an almighty smash-and-grab by Martin, who went from trailing Aprilia team-mate Bezzecchi by six tenths of a second in qualifying to being in position to win the race and extend his championship lead.

Whether he would've won the race without his compartment syndrome issue is conjecture at this point - but he certainly he feels he could have, and he feels that his title charge is emboldened by this weekend, as long as he can suitably address this arm issue, through surgery or management.

There is still a very substantial single-lap question mark - 0.546s off on Friday, 0.587s off on Saturday is a losing formula - but there's something to be said for how deftly he was navigating the race circumstances this weekend.

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

Di Giannantonio was pacing for a front row (or maybe even better) after three corners of his final Q2 lap, then went down in Turn 4.

But it didn't compromise his grid position too much, and that anyway didn't seem all that important to the outcome of his weekend.

Much more impactful was that early grand prix melee that dropped him into the mid-pack - with Aldeguer squeezing him to the outside kerb at Turn 1 in the inciting incident - and a subsequent brake-lever concern that limited his ability to overtake back up the order.

Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 21st Grand Prix: 10th

Make no mistake - after the unseemly business of his stroppy back-and-forth with Yamaha at Aragon, Quartararo properly showed up at Misano.

That was easy to overlook given his most notable moment of the weekend was a clumsy fall on the sprint while trying to set up a move on Diogo Moreira - but this indirectly will have been a consequence of being the only Yamaha rider with the potential to do anything of note. Of the 11 1m31s laps delivered by Yamahas in the sprint, Quartararo was responsible for all 11.

"It's clear he has more than us this weekend," admitted team-mate Alex Rins, usually not one to acknowledge it so plainly.

Quartararo's grand prix was more muted in terms of performance, due to a need to conserve fuel - but given that he stood his ground impressively in the top 10.

Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 6th

Fernandez wasn't perfect, but clearly wasn't given the best opportunities to make much of this weekend. A return of seventh and sixth in the two races is kind of the bare minimum given the level of the Aprilia, but he can't really be faulted.

He did labour a bit on Friday, with errors in crucial moments, but navigated Q1 well - including a massive "one in 15" save tucking the front at Turn 1. But in Q2 there was a "problem on both bikes", so he was well off his Q1 time and grid position-limited, conditioning both races.

An unexpected fuel-consumption problem on Sunday meant he was in the lean engine map for virtually the whole thing and never got the chance to pick off the arm-pump-limited Martin or show much of anything.

Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: 8th

Bastianini just missed out on Friday on what would have been a weekend-transforming top-10 place. He had decided against fitting a fresh front tyre for his final time attack - which is not an unconventional decision, but in his case it proved "a big mistake".

The pace was probably there to do better (he set his fastest lap of the grand prix, and a very good one at that, on the final lap, in typical Bastianini fashion) but from 16th on the grid it was never really on the cards, and even for all these caveats there is little doubt the transcendent Acosta had much more performance.

Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 14th

'The world's fastest journalist', or whatever they say, lived up to the billing this weekend by grabbing onto the back of Acosta and powering to a great Q2 appearance.

But that 'journalist' quip is increasingly more relevant. It has been a long, long while since Espargaro has raced regularly and it is showing. He "missed the aggression to overtake" on Saturday, and Sunday's race exhausted him.

He was all too keenly aware at the end that he was a 35-year-old fighting against a grid of largely 20-somethings. "My respect to Marc Marquez and Johann Zarco!" he laughed.

Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: 12th

The best laptime of Razgatlioglu's weekend came in the grand prix, on lap 12. If you know your MotoGP, you know this is extremely suboptimal in terms of extracting a positive result.

He said knowledge of Misano from World Superbike "did not help" here, and his one-lap pace was extremely poor, particularly in a "very bad" Q1.

But the race pace was obviously there, at a fairly high level. He was the top Yamaha on the road, in the sprint, though lost a position for track limits, then was right with Yamaha benchmark Quartararo in the grand prix - though again fell foul of track limits, even if the resulting long lap didn't actually cost him a position.

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

The follow-up at Misano was more like what we all would have expected from Zarco's comeback weekend at Aragon - and even so, the actual speed was fairly decent.

Zarco navigated Friday well to land in Q2, but this was probably flattering his ultimate potential race trim. Still, he could have been much higher on the grid had he improved on his second Q2 run - and had he avoided a penalty for impeding Bezzecchi, which he acknowledged as "totally fair".

He got stuck behind a fuel-managing Quartararo on Sunday before missing his braking at Turn 8 late on and going down.

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

Mir was markedly slower than usual relative to his fellow Honda riders, but this seemed to have less to do with a lack of confidence on braking he reported on Friday and more to do with some sort of unspecified ailment that increasingly bothered him over the weekend.

Suffering from a headache and with no strength, he gutted it through a fruitless sprint but had to give up very early in the main race, fearing that riding around "would only make the situation worse".

He now has medical tests to do between here and the Red Bull Ring to properly figure out his situation.

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

After a run of really strong form of late, Misano was largely a letdown for Moreira.

For most of the weekend, the third sector - and Curvone in particular - was the culprit, as he and LCR struggled to stabilise the Honda sufficiently in the fast right-hander.

He said after the sprint: "I told Honda, tomorrow we're cutting this corner, I don't care!" But Moreira actually made a bit of a breakthrough there in Sunday warm-up, then fell off right away on Sunday without managing to properly confirm his work.

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

This one will sting for a while.

A 37-point weekend looked on the cards for Bezzecchi after his blistering record lap in Q2 - but it turned into a nine-pointer instead, with defeat in the sprint and catastrophe in the main race.

He seemed in a real hurry to break away from Marquez and the rest of them at the start of the grand prix, but with the bike unsettled through Curvone and the subsequent Turn 12 he arrived at Turn 13 compromised and lost the front.

Forget about this being a home race or whatever. This is a monumental blow for his championship.

Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 11th

"Not fast enough" was Binder's summary through the weekend and at the end of it. His qualifying was "a bit s**t" and his race pace was generally underwhelming, but he did spare his KTM team any repair bills and finished in the points.

He's pacing for an inglorious, ill-fitting conclusion to his MotoGP tenure - but is at least just quietly struggling rather than properly imploding. Or is it better to burn out than to fade away (my my, hey hey)?

Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: 13th

Despite lacking confidence again with the Ducati GP25, Morbidelli looked notably more competitive than for most of his difficult final season in MotoGP. He gets a bit of credit for this - but it gets almost entirely offset by the fact he didn't capitalise on the opportunity.

Another instance of impeding a fellow rider - this time Bastianini on Friday - needlessly capped his Sunday potential by virtue of a long lap penalty, meaning Saturday was the best shot at a headline result.

But no such luck. He looked uncharacteristically timid in the early laps of the sprint, roughed up a bit by Moreira and then forced to spend the rest of the race shadowing the LCR Honda rider without a way past.

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

Friday had looked gently encouraging but proved a mirage as Rins ultimately just didn't have all that much performance to offer this weekend - and was not happy with the bike.

He was only ever in play for some attrition-aided points on Sunday but became part of said attrition, parking up as he suffered from a "migraine and severe nausea".

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

A freak "cold brakes, cold tyres" crash at Rio literally something like 30 seconds into the weekend set the tone for Miller.

He just wasn't very competitive, chasing the right set-up all throughout and falling off in the grand prix as early as lap two shortly after a ding-dong battle with Zarco.

He said the bike felt improved on Sunday but "I didn't get to do bugger all on it".

Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: DNF

Favourable track, unfavourable track, home track, foreign track, left-handers, right-handers, hard braking, high-speed - suddenly it just doesn't seem to matter at all.

This is the third time in a row (and yet only the third time this season) that Bagnaia sits lower than 20th in these rankings. He has looked all wrong since his arm-pump surgery - though he clearly seems of the opinion this is more coincidence than causation.

"It's extremely easy to see the difference between what my bike is doing compared to all the other Ducatis. Big, big difference, but difficult to understand why," Bagnaia lamented in-weekend, hitting a familiar note. He could not extract rear grip and struggled to stay on the bike, feeling "humiliated" by the experience.

The Turn 2 crash in the grand prix delivered a coup de grace to this terrible weekend - but who's to say it will be any better in Austria?