The MotoGP 2025 season finale yielded an increasingly familiar winner - but a new first-place name with our rider rankings, an 11th different rider to take the spot across 22 rounds.
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: 4th GP: 2nd
I spent a long time picking between two candidates for first place. Raul Fernandez was candidate number three - he entered the thinking at the last moment, and soon felt like the only right choice.
He described himself as 90% fit on Friday, with the shoulder injury from Portimao still giving him trouble, and his weekend looked very much in trouble when he missed the top 10 on Friday.
But Q1 was superb, Q2 produced a genuine pole bid (half a tenth of second off), and he was the lead Aprilia in the sprint despite regretting the choice of the soft front tyre.
Marco Bezzecchi would have surely beaten him on Saturday without his sprint issue, then did beat him on Sunday, but only just. It was the most competitive Fernandez, who is clearly able to find a real groove at Valencia, has looked in MotoGP.
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 2nd GP: 4th
Pedro Acosta finished the season three points away from doubling the points tally of the nearest KTM rider. At Valencia, he absolutely mullered the other KTMs, looking well superior not just over a single lap but in race pace, too.
Want to quiz Val on his rankings? Join The Race Members' Club and leave a comment on this post, and he'll answer your questions later this week, as he does after every MotoGP weekend
It was not the cleanest weekend - he crashed right before qualifying, went wide chasing after leader Alex Marquez in the sprint, then had some trouble with both ride height devices on the opening lap on Sunday - and he lamented traction being "a nightmare".
But in both races the RC16 held up its pace better in his hands than expected. And his ever-growing supremacy over his KTM peers cannot be taken for granted.
Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 5th GP: 1st
Third place is no criticism of Bezzecchi, who is the defining rider of the second half of this campaign - for good much more than for ill.
He crashed at Turn 4 on Friday after releasing the brakes too early, and he made a meal out of his first run in Q2, but both times the rebound was impressive - the pole lap particularly so.
Even without failing to disengage the ride height device at Turn 1 in the sprint he may have been destined to defeat against Marquez. Sunday's race, meanwhile, was managed perfectly.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 3rd GP: 3rd
It was difficult to choose the standout Ducati rider this weekend - and while Fabio Di Giannantonio did end up using Marquez as a reference on Friday to help ensure Q2, he ranks ahead by virtue of his advantage on Sunday.
It was just all round a good weekend, very close to being great but not quite there. For the sprint, a too-slow start was the culprit, but on Sunday it was harder to tell.
Di Giannantonio looked too tentative in the early laps, but perhaps that paid off in tyre life down the line in seeing off Acosta for the podium - and the two Aprilias were probably always out of reach.
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 1st GP: 6th
Mostly notable on Friday for trying GP25-spec aero (shelved later into the weekend), Marquez qualified well and suddenly felt "activated" in the sprint, pouncing on the opportunity that had been presented.
No such opportunity looked on offer on Sunday, the pace collapsing as the lap counter approached double digits with what Marquez described as an abnormally early tyre drop.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 11th GP: 5th
The early crash could've disturbed his weekend, but by and large Fermin Aldeguer settled into being just 'one of the Ducatis' through all the main sessions - not the fastest, not the slowest, fine in qualifying, decent on race pace.
He probably should've been quicker in the early laps of the sprint to take himself out of the Jack Miller firing line - and probably could've done more to avoid the clash.
But cautiousness again in the early laps on Sunday paid off very well, as those around him ran out of rubber and he romped to a top-five finish, secured at the last corner at his Gresini team-mate Marquez's expense.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: DNF GP: 7th
It felt fitting that Luca Marini was the rider to score the points to deliver Honda from 'Rank D' concession status (which was widely welcomed within Honda, as counter-intuitive as that sounds).
A steadying presence since his return from injury, he had a "nightmare" Friday and was again just narrowly on the wrong end of things in Q1 before being wiped out by his team-mate Joan Mir right away in the sprint.
His good starts in the weekend were lauded by Honda stablemate Johann Zarco, and the second one of those starts actually paid off on Sunday, setting Marini up for a steady ride - past Miller - to seventh place.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 7th GP: DNF
A crash out of 11th place was an unfitting way to end Quartararo's productive-considering-the-machinery campaign - though probably a fitting way to conclude his recent relationship with the Yamaha M1.
Front feeling-limited on Friday, he snuck into Q2 and then performed well there - but couldn't really fight in the sprint despite a combative start, so was probably always destined for an equally-or-more dispiriting grand prix.
It came in the form of a clutch issue off the line (and the ride height device remaining engaged until Turn 4), which meant an anonymous 23 laps before he hit the deck in pursuit of Enea Bastianini for 10th on the 24th lap.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 12th GP: 9th
This felt like Miller's best weekend in a while, with even the aggro caused by the Aldeguer clash and resulting penalty not enough to take the shine off.
The clash, in the sprint, was nothing overly egregious (though I think neither was the penalty), and Miller then played his cards pretty well in the main event to get good track position.
He couldn't eke out the requisite tyre life to keep Aldeguer, Marini and Brad Binder behind, but while Miller isn't a known tyre whisperer, there just wasn't much more in the Yamaha here.
Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: 16th GP: 15th
Nicolo Bulega had plenty of Portimao mileage to lean on from the World Superbike Championship last week, but nothing for Valencia - which he clearly found more of a handful, needing to chain corners in quick succession while using a braking style that still can't be too natural to him right now.
He stayed out of trouble in both races for a pair of reasonable finishes, though was disappointed on Sunday by "zero grip on the rear from the beginning" of the grand prix after the warm-up had promised more.
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 19th GP: DNF
Aleix Espargaro averaged a ranking of 17.8 in his previous outings this season. I had noticed what he too had obviously noticed, as he acknowledged here that he had been 'very upset with my level".
But he felt he'd got into a much better rhythm in the role recently, and was very obviously fast at Valencia - firmly in the mix for Q2 both on Friday and Saturday, clearly fast enough to fight for meaningful positions.
He gets a bit of stick for the sprint - overly cautious initially, then badly wide at Turn 2 just as his Honda stablemates collided up ahead - but deserved a real shot to make amends in the main race, only to have his bike hobbled by the ludicrous grid collision when Franco Morbidelli ploughed into him.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 8th GP: 8th
A pair of eighth places can be a totally sensible return for the current KTM, but they didn't feel that way this weekend for Binder, who in the end just did not figure out how to use this year's KTM RC16 over one lap to the same effect as team-mate Acosta.
That deficit, though, often appeared offset by a greater understanding of how to manage race distances - but here too Acosta looked to have much more, and Binder's two respectable finishes are flattered slightly by attrition and penalties.
At least he was the clear second-best KTM rider this weekend - though was this helped by Pol Espargaro's absence?
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 17th GP: 11th
Friday suggested an ignominious end (for now) to Miguel Oliveira's MotoGP career, as he struggled for edge grip and floundered on the timesheets.
He was better on the two race days. Sprint-wise, he regretted not taking enough risks in the first couple of corners (he ended the first lap 23rd), but then the main race was quite impressive and productive, even though attrition clearly helped his progress to 11th.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 9th GP: DNF
Valencia really did not follow the blueprint of a typical Ai Ogura weekend this year. Instead of a difficult start, he was quick early. Instead of saving his best for last, he crashed out of the race.
Amid all that was a "super stupid", "almost embarrassing" kerb-hopping crash on Friday, a Q2 underperformance he largely attributed to a weekend-long struggle with acceleration at Turn 13, a reasonable sprint and a grand prix that was ruined before the crash.
He was caught up in the Zarco/Bagnaia situation, so was looking to fight back when he crashed while in the process of trying to set up a move on Mir for 14th.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 13th GP: 10th
Valencia is not one of Bastianini's favourite tracks, and that showed, even if the finishes look reasonable on paper.
He didn't gel with the soft rear, struggling with understeer, so was way slow in Q1 and then unremarkable in the sprint, but the medium rear for the main race also didn't bring a huge step.
This was primarily because of big tyre wear on the front, which he countered well enough to bank a top-10 despite some significant mid-race pressure from behind.
Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 18th GP: DNF
Maverick Vinales' absence between Indonesia six weeks ago and Valencia has allowed him to ride pain-free - but still lacking strength for the braking and direction changes, so producing fairly similar results on the timesheets to before he stopped.
He wasn't particularly competitive here, though improved things by shifting further forward on the bike (even if it's normally not his optimal position) and deserved to pick up a point or two from the race before he started missing corners and realised trying to hang on to the finish was too much of a risk.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 15th GP: 14th
Alex Rins's weekend was wrong-footed by a lack of fit between the track and his base set-up on Friday, and he felt optimistic at day-end that big progress could come now that they've shortened the bike.
No such luck, as performance in both races proved very middling, with grip lacking and tyre wear severe.
This feature has not been kind to him this season, but that's because it's felt like there's been very little to latch on to in terms of promise - which could maybe change on Yamaha's V4 bike.
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 14th GP: DNF
Pecco Bagnaia can be super, super proud of how he handled himself during a Valencia weekend that repeatedly punched him in the mouth - he refused to throw his team under the bus on Saturday when his Ducati ran out of fuel in Q1, then extended the same courtesy to Zarco over their crash on Sunday. His approach was that of a fundamentally decent man and great ambassador for the series.
I just don't think there's any great evidence he was ever going to have a particularly great weekend. He wasn't competitive enough on Friday, and - by all available data - marginal to make it through Q1 even if the bike didn't run dry.
Any lofty expectations from 16th on the grid would've been unreasonable, especially as he only really got the sprint, but he didn't do much in it - stuck in the pack, then picked off by a hardly-spectacular Bastianini at the very end.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 22nd GP: DNF
Putting Jorge Martin in any position here feels almost senseless, given he made a very deliberate point of treating this race weekend as anything but a race weekend.
He claimed he had been told by doctors that he can ride but can't get injured again, so the entire weekend was built around that premise.
It meant no real effort to make Q2 on Friday, a trip to the run-off in the sprint because he was getting "too hot" and gave up on a corner when faced with the slightest risk of a crash and a Sunday outing that barely qualifies as a race start.
Martin, who needed to make sure he served a double long lap from Motegi, rolled out completely out of Turn 1, slowing in the run-off, rejoining at the very back, serving the penalties, then doing a handful more laps before stopping.
There was never any intention to fight for anything here and, well, fair enough.
Qualifying: 23rd Sprint: 20th GP: 16th
The Yamaha V4, with a new chassis around it, had another reasonable Friday with Augusto Fernandez but stalled out again.
The tester is convinced the available parameters are still insufficient to make the package compliant enough, particularly the front. Fernandez has been crashing these prototypes a lot, and did so again twice here. "It's OK till it's not" was his description of the front feeling.
The sprint was a genuinely good showing (19s off the winner, 3s off slowest inline-four Yamaha) but over a longer distance on Sunday things fell apart again.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 10th GP: 12th
The manner in which Zarco delivered the coup de grâce to Bagnaia's miserable season bordered on incomprehensible - the helicopter camera footage is not charitable, showing a rider out of control.
The taste from the rest of his weekend is a much better one. A "very disappointed" 15th on Friday and relying on Honda tester Espargaro as a reference in Q1, he rode a reasonable sprint as the medium-rear outlier, then had solid pace with the same compound on Sunday (once he'd served a penalty for the bad Turn 4 error).
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: DNF GP: 13th
On a difficult weekend for Honda, Mir's performance ebbed curiously relative to his peers. The soft front, on which he delivered a largely unremarkable Q2 lap, was a source of frustration for being too soft for his liking.
But both of his subsequent chances at making up ground with the hard tyre went begging when, after getting roughed up over the first couple of corners, he tucked the front fighting back through and took down team-mate Marini with him, earning a rightful long lap penalty for Sunday in the process.
Serving the penalty dropped him from seventh to 16th in the grand prix, but he looked on course to recover to a top-10 finish - only to suffer a "massive drop" from the tyre, which by the end was costing him seconds per lap. Mir couldn't explain it, though Zarco theorised Mir's style was asking too much of the rear.
Qualifying: 24th Sprint: 21st GP: 17th
It was a solid Friday by the standards of Somkiat Chantra's overall difficult season, but in the end he didn't really have the pace to fight for anything big here - particularly over the full distance.
This capped a rookie season that didn't warrant a sophomore season, though at least Chantra sounded like he'd enjoyed it.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 6th GP: DNF
Imagine, if you will, the world's longest sigh.
The upsetting twist here is that Morbidelli was kind of good before the hideous error on Sunday - he was proper fast on Friday, still in the mix despite a "missed" Q2, then making a point of "taking my time" to overtake former team-mate Quartararo cleanly in the sprint.
His hand-fracturing collision (get well soon, obviously) with Espargaro coming up to the grid in the grand prix is the sort of error that absolutely cannot happen.
