Spanish Grand Prix 2026 MotoGP rider rankings

MotoGP's 2026 Spanish Grand Prix weekend, which yielded a Marquez family double, was VERY complicated to rank.

There were riders who soared in the wet but disappointed in the dry; riders who went well in the dry but looked out of their depth in the wet; riders who got quite lucky; riders who made hard-to-fathom mistakes.

The number of those who really put things together is in the single digits - which reflects the scope of the challenge, rather than the quality of the grid.

Agree, disagree or just want to set Val off on a wild tangent? Put your questions or thoughts on the rankings on this post in The Race Members' Club and he'll answer them in his debrief.

Qualifying: 5th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 1st

Even from a pair of second-row starts, Alex Marquez would have waltzed to a 37-pointer here if not for the Saturday afternoon rain.

He was very obviously the exceptional rider in the pack this weekend, "flowing" and "dancing" from the get go on a Ducati that - Sunday form suggested - still doesn't truly have an answer for Aprilia's exceptional pace in grands prix on the harder rubber.

Marquez’s bang-average qualifying in mixed weather is the only point of contention. Later in the day he could have done precious little different as his sprint unravelled; it would have been unreasonable to expect him to pit from the lead on what was basically a dry track until he arrived to the main straight having just decided to stay out, and the slicks-on-wet crash a minute later looked extremely difficult to avoid.

Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 7th

Prodigious wet-weather pace by Johann Zarco - who fellow Honda rider Luca Marini labelled clearly the best rain rider on the grid right now - was the backbone of a strong weekend, but the dry performance was good enough to support it.

He was unlucky in the sprint, skidding into the gravel on the wet track moments after Alex Marquez had gone down at the same corner, and recovered very well, having already fought valiantly against the KTMs in the dry.

Sunday was valiant again, though late rear tyre drop-off - probably a consequence of using the rear too much for turning - prevented a dream top-five finish.

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

The Aprilia is very strong on Sundays and Marco Bezzecchi in particular consistently brings his A-game. If you're going to pick one day of the weekend, that's the one to pick - as the points standings show.

He was unlucky to 'slip' on the Alex Marquez tear-off at the start of the sprint, then was given a second chance by the rain - but didn't get the temperature into the brakes on his rain bike so went down immediately.

If there was any culpability there, the grand prix more than made up for it.

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

Four weekends is probably enough to believe in this run of form by Fabio Di Giannantonio. Though he has his limitations, he has pound for pound probably been Ducati's best rider - which is reflected in the standings.

He was quite fortunate to be on the front row given his time (0.87s off second, just 0.41s ahead of seventh) and squandered that front row off the line both times, something that he admits is up to him to figure out.

Beyond that, the races were good, with only minor caveats. In the sprint, he was a bit limp after the bike change - attributing it to a used wet tyre on the rear (only Enea Bastianini had the same, and he also really struggled).

In the main race, he was left with a "bittersweet feeling" due to a set-up decision gone wrong - though that would've been a second-or-third place difference at best.

Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 14th

Still relentlessly negative about the bike and the project - and still performing just about well enough to where it doesn't come off as badly as it could have done.

Through the whole weekend Fabio Quartararo only looked to have a little bit extra in hand over his Yamaha peers, but that translated when it counted, with points on both days.

The ride in the sprint was strong after the pitstop, and Sunday briefly looked downright heroic as he kept Franco Morbidelli’s Ducati at bay for 12th before finally yielding to him and Luca Marini.

Quartararo hates being a Yamaha rider right now, and he particularly doesn't enjoy the new bike - in competitive terms and in terms of characteristics - but he is clearly putting in genuine effort on track.

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

The self-inflicted complications to Jorge Martin's weekend - two crashes on Friday, the grid penalty for impeding Alex Marquez, the Q2 crash - scarcely affected his weekend at all in the end.

Starting seventh in the sprint and a penalised 10th in the main race, he both times delivered stunning first-lap progress. If not for the immediate front brake failure, it should have paid serious dividends in the sprint (though we don't know how the arrival of the rain would have played out for him).

In the grand prix Martin ultimately just wasn't that fast once things settled down - attributing this to "worst of the weekend" feeling with the rear tyre, in seeming contrast to other Aprilia riders.

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

Bastianini seemed to be the fastest KTM rider - maybe with a bit of margin - in the dry here, though ultimately didn't score that much more than his stablemates.

Not known for wet-weather prowess, he did good damage limitation in Q2 with a strong lap in the pack (before crashing) but struggled post-pitstop in the wet in the sprint.

Sunday was satisfactory, although the pace was below Bastianini's expectations, with front tyre wear a hindrance from early on.

But the overall trend looks pretty good.

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

'Never spectacular, always good enough' would be my short summary of Raul Fernandez's pair-of-sixes weekend, as he continues to ably exploit the sheer quality of the Aprilia RS-GP - this time at a Jerez track that he says he hasn't gelled with at all in MotoGP.

He booked a Q2 spot on Friday with the help of a potential breakthrough on the engine brake side - which proved very important because he had very little to offer in the mixed conditions in qualifying, overheating the rubber too much in the dry part of the track.

But he rode a very nice race in the dry portion of the sprint (and salvaged things decently in the wet), and was largely where he needed to be on Sunday - through he lamented cooking his rear tyre while working his way past Zarco, which opened the door for Trackhouse team-mate Ai Ogura to pass him.

Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: 5th

Ogura says he had "lost my feeling" on a MotoGP bike during the break - though had it sorted by the end of Friday.

More worrying is that he has never found his feeling on a MotoGP bike in the wet. He was way too slow on any semblance of wet track through Saturday; while he rather bravely admitted after the sprint that he'd briefly forgotten he had a second bike he could switch to, that had no real impact on his race, relative to the fact he was way off the pace in those final laps.

The grand prix itself was very Ogura-like, measured and impressive, and reinforcing the perception that he could actually be the grid's new go-to second-half-of-the-race specialist.

Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: 9th

I have some analytical-ish fondness for Fermin Aldeguer's call to stay out on slicks in increasingly dreadfully-wet conditions in the sprint - the wrong decision in hindsight, and also really in the moment, but kind of an understandable gamble given he kind of admitted he was fishing for a red flag.

He had a reasonable weekend otherwise, performing up to par across the single-lap sessions (Aldeguer's par does, unfortunately, include a Q2 crash) and running a solid race on Sunday.

Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: 20th

An alright-if-compromised shift by wildcard Augusto Fernandez, the highlight being him qualifying as the top Yamaha in the mixed weather - a really cool achievement against a line-up of four, even with the conditions caveat.

He pitted at the right time in the sprint but was already a little too far back to capitalise, perhaps riding overcautiously. The same is probably true for Sunday, as he had an early rear brake failure and just cruised around way off the pace.

Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: DNF

In the standings and on the track, Pecco Bagnaia is being outclassed by the other riders on the 2026-spec Ducati right now.

He deserves credit for his weekend-saving pit call in the sprint, though it's much easier to make that call when you're way lower than you're supposed to be - as a result of a lack of rear grip in wet and dry, particularly in wet (the Q2 result makes for brutal reading).

Sunday was shaping up to be a reasonable effort before a mechanical failure, seemingly on the brakes. It was harsh - but no more so than Saturday was fortunate.

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

The seven-time champion is almost certainly the only rider on the grid who can deliver a weekend with a genuinely-iconic win - and still have it be extremely worrying. Which this was.

Marquez was superb in the mixed conditions in qualifying. And, though outrageously fortunate with the circumstances that enabled him to pit in the sprint, he was characteristically devastating once unleashed onto the track in the wet. No qualms there - no surprises there.

But, having come into the weekend insisting he's now fit enough, he was just not fast enough in the dry. He was gobbled up in the early laps of the sprint despite the buffer created by Zarco, then wasn't looking all that hot in his one-and-a-bit laps of Sunday's race before he shunted.

It feels foreign to type these words but Marc Marquez - and not just the bike under him - has to be faster to win this championship.

Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 13th

Luca Marini missed the Q2 cut narrowly - as did his Honda peers - on Friday, then got no real chance to express what he believed was very credible race pace.

His performance in the wet-weather sessions was unremarkable but not particularly bad or anything, and Sunday was low-key as a result of having his winglets clipped in a Turn 1 "funnel".

Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: 10th

This was an unusually messy weekend by Pedro Acosta - who only looked like his usual 'best KTM' self in mixed weather.

That enabled a good starting position, but it was telling how quickly he got reeled in by Bastianini in both races.

It's hard to be particularly critical about his slicks-on-wet crash in the sprint, but he made his Sunday life needlessly difficult by clattering into Raul Fernandez and 'halving' his front fairing, which made riding "quite abnormal" for the rest of the race.

Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: 11th

There's an argument for putting Brad Binder ahead of Acosta - and maybe even Bastianini? - in the KTM order this weekend, on the strength of the Saturday gamble alone. I just can't get there.

It was a proper call, and he was the only one clearly sacrificing a points-paying position to pit early. It was the inverse of his Austria 2021 slicks-on-wet win - and was then followed by what Binder himself quipped was "the crash I should have had there [in 2021]". Conditions were brutal, but given the position he had found himself in and the time he'd had to settle in on wets by then it's a difficult one to accept.

And the rest of the weekend was pretty beige. He was "haemorrhaging time" in fast corners on Friday, middling in Q1 and struggling with the rear pushing the front in the main race, unable to pounce on a hobbled Acosta.

Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 12th

Morbidelli's sprint podium was well-deserved if not well-earned. Well-deserved because clearly countless hours had been poured in by him and the team to find an all-round foundation of performance on the Ducati, and it's just not happened. Not well-earned because to be in a position to adopt the sprint strategy he had adopted, you first need to put yourself in that position.

He was just not very fast at all in the dry all weekend, and crashed in Q1 in conditions that should've suited him better.

His performance pattern in the dry is still a marvel. He did his fastest laps in the grand prix on laps 23 and 24, probably the fastest rider on track at that moment, but way, way far too back for that to matter. It is a complete, 180-degree reversal from the fast-but-quickly-fading Ducati rider he was two years ago.

Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: 16th

The grand prix was probably the best session of Alex Rins's weekend, which is generally how you want it - but in Yamaha's case right now that's no guarantee of points.

He could have scored in the sprint, but just didn't seem right in wet conditions even relative to the other Yamahas - as evidenced by a poor Q1 and the fact he couldn't capitalise on pitting on the right lap.

Qualifying: 20th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: DNF

The sprint hit from Toprak Razgatlioglu was badly timed for Lorenzo Savadori.

In his primary gig as test rider, he's still due to run on Monday - and then give the Aprilia 850cc prototype its first runout on Wednesday-Thursday. This will be made more arduous now, as the crash left him in pain and with a stiff neck.

But it also came on a weekend in which he really could have got some semblance of result.

He wasn't a match for the other Aprilias over a single lap, but was keeping himself in the pack on Saturday when the Razgatlioglu collision happened - and then had to park up on Sunday after a fruitless effort to ride through the pain.

Qualifying: 23rd Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 17th

The least accomplished weekend of Diogo Moreira's young MotoGP career so far, the upshot of which is that he just wasn't quite fast enough on his first premier-class contact with Jerez.

There was a touch of bad luck about qualifying (he crashed right after having a decent, Zarco tow-assisted lap removed due to yellow flags), but he wasn't particularly competitive on Friday, or in the sprint (especially after pitting), or in the main race (struggling with excessive movements on the bike late on).

Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 18th

I am grading Jack Miller harsher on his mistakes in the wet than most of his peers, for a simple reason: his supreme skill on a 'marginal' track in particular is a considerable part of his value, but it's not being supported by results right now.

After a Friday in which he could've been fastest Yamaha in the dry but didn't put the sectors together at all (not that this would've changed anything in terms of Q2 passage), he had a "s**t crash" in Q1, then was forced to dawdle around on a spare bike inexplicably running a 3.5 bar rear tyre pressure.

On Saturday he "f**ked up" not following Binder into the pits, and was already devastated by that when he multiplied the devastation with a slicks-in-wet crash.

That was the big weekend opportunity gone. Sunday wasn't ever going to be anything special - but was made more un-special by an opening-lap mistake that dropped him to last, and a mid-race rear brake failure.

Qualifying: 14th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 15th

Joan Mir set fire to his weekend by not heeding a black-flag-with-orange-disc command after a practice crash disassembled the right side of his fairing. He felt the double long-lap penalty was "very strict" but it's really hard to fault the stewards.

Beyond that, some less egregious missteps - a couple of Turn 1 mistakes that cost him Q2 on Friday, an outlap crash in the wet in the sprint.

He was particularly unhappy with his Honda at the end of the weekend, and not without cause, but it was a poor weekend on his part, too.

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

Like with fellow rookie Moreira - but to a more dramatic extent - this was the worst weekend by Razgatlioglu in MotoGP so far.

The headline item was removing himself and Savadori from the sprint as both went past Morbidelli, in a crash that seems to look a little worse every time you watch it.

But it was also just a bit ropey after a solid Friday and very good Saturday morning practice.

Razgatlioglu had encountered what sure sounds like a familiar Yamaha issue in Q1, saying that he was "spinning a lot" on a drying track and less comfortable than in the full wet.

After the ruined sprint, he then had such a difficult time early on in the grand prix that the long lap penalty was basically an irrelevance. He only rebounded in the very end, with less rear-pushing, and started "riding like Toprak - but it's too late".