MotoGP

Valencian Grand Prix 2022 MotoGP rider ratings

by Simon Patterson
10 min read

The Valencian Grand Prix was always going to be a high-stakes end to the 2022 MotoGP season, not just because Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Quartararo had a title to device between themselves – but also because it was the swansong race for a number of riders and manufacturers: always a recipe for a few surprise results come crunch time.

In the end, it was Bagnaia who triumphed in the championship, but arguably with a much more careful race than his rival Quartararo – and at the front it was one of those highly motivated figures who stood on the top step of the podium, as Alex Rins took a dominant victory for Suzuki in its final MotoGP race.

And, as is the case every race weekend (title on the line or not), that means lots to talk about when it comes to rating how the entire grid performed.


Our MotoGP ranking system is simple: the riders who we believe performed the best in every race are at the top, and the ones who underperformed are at the bottom and scored appropriately.

It isn’t just about the end result though, with pre-race expectation and form going into a race and a weekend heavily influencing their eventual score, not just the points they scored every Sunday afternoon.


10 Alex Rins

Started: 5th Finished: 1st

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There are hardly enough words to describe the emotions of Alex Rins’s final Suzuki ride. Starting out with tears on the grid, fired up by a start so good The Race checked twice to make sure it wasn’t illegal, and then transformed into a race win by absolutely controlling pace, it’s fair to say that he dominated proceedings before ending it with more tears in the box.

He couldn’t have given Suzuki a better leaving present – even if no-one is quite sure the bosses back in Japan deserve it.

9 Fabio Quartararo

Started: 4th Finished: 4th

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Credit to Fabio Quartararo: all weekend he had the air of a man with no pressure on his shoulders and only a single goal in mind – victory. With no hopes of title defence at all without standing on the top step of the podium, he reminded us just how good he is by throwing everything and the kitchen sink at it on Sunday. Only contact with a brace of Ducatis and the limitations of the Yamaha M1 stopped it from happening.

9 Brad Binder

Started: 7th Finished: 2nd

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Every now and then, Brad Binder is going to be Brad Binder, and Sunday was yet another example of just how talented the South African is in race spec. Charging through the field like only he can, at a track with more passing opportunities than Valencia his pace would have been a nailed-on victory. As it is, second place is still a very respectable result – and the fact that it came on a new 2023-spec chassis makes next year already look even more rosy.

8 Joan Mir

Started: 12th Finished: 6th

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Given that team-mate Rins absolutely dominated Suzuki’s final race to take a win, on one hand sixth might be seen as a disappointment for the 2020 world champion. But it turned out that Joan Mir was experiencing an intermittent total electronics failure for most of the latter half of the race, which suddenly makes the ride look very impressive indeed. Controlling a 300bhp animal with feel alone, it’s perhaps a reminder of just how good Mir really is.

8 Jorge Martin

Started: 1st Finished: 3rd

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A strong way to round out the year, Jorge Martin almost had to get back onto the podium in Valencia to make amends for his race-ending fall from the lead last time out in Sepang. He’s proved once again in the second half of this season that he’s comfortably fast when he can stay on the bike, and it’s a good base to lead directly into a stronger campaign next year.

7.5 Luca Marini

Started: 11th Finished: 7th

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Yet another fairly standard Luca Marini race result, with the Italian again showing that he’s nothing if not consistent, it’s one that could in fact have been a bit better in the end were it not for another of the myriad of technical problems that plagued the grid this weekend. Getting a temperature warning light from early on, it’s credit to him that he secured a top-eight finish while nursing home an unwell VR46 Ducati.

7 Raul Fernandez

Started: 22nd Finished: 12th

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Sunday’s race was a good example of the steps that Raul Fernandez has made in 2022, maturing, learning, and improving from someone who would have followed plenty of others into the gravel early in the weekend into a more confident rider able to manage his tyres to the chequered flag. It’s nice to end his KTM career with his best MotoGP performance to date and, given the task that the RC16 has been this year, it bodes well for an Aprilia switch.

7 Pecco Bagnaia

Started: 8th Finished: 9th

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You can absolutely forgive Pecco Bagnaia for being nervous not just on Sunday but all weekend at Valencia, given the stakes that were on the line for him – and the way he raced reflected that tension.

Looking uncomfortable and tense in a way that we haven’t seen from him in a long time, it almost felt like a mistake was going to come after all, such was his lack of confidence despite the odds being very much on his side. But, despite all that pressure, he did what he needed to do and not much more, and the title is his in the end.

7 Remy Gardner

Started: 20th Finished: 13th

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Ever since Remy Gardner was sacked by KTM, it’s seemed like he’s been trying to prove it right, with motivation far from high at points in the year. But, fired up for his last race in the premier class as a World Superbike switch beckons, he showed at last what he’s actually capable of with an excellent ride in which he and team-mate Fernandez had a cracking battle largely missed (along with nearly everything else) by the cameras. A good end to a bad year.

6 Enea Bastianini

Started: 13th Finished: 8th

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Perhaps another rider who should have expected more on Sunday, his mistakes came on Saturday, with a series of crashes leaving him too far back on the grid. The Valencia track’s lack of passing opportunities did the rest, negating his normally impressive abilities to put on a late surge. However, with Aleix Espargaro’s technical problems meaning that finishing the race was basically enough to secure third in the standings for Bastianini, there might also have been an element of ‘this is good enough’ at play as he took no risks.

6 Miguel Oliveira

Started: 14th Finished: 5th

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There’s something fitting about Miguel Oliveira’s final KTM performance coming in a dry race where he made up a considerable number of places, secured a respectable finishing position, and still managed to get overshadowed by team-mate Brad Binder. It’s been the story of his time at the brand, and Sunday was no different. The new challenge at Aprilia might be just the relief he needs from it.

6 Takaaki Nakagami

Started: 24th Finished: 14th

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Starting from dead last thanks to another careless blunder ahead of the race (this time cruising on the racing line), and still working with only a hand and a half as he continues to recover from his Aragon injuries.

5 Maverick Vinales

Started: 6th Finished: DNF

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Hard to read too much into Vinales’s performance given that he, like team-mate Aleix Espargaro, was the victim of the technical problems that struck Aprilia’s Valencia weekend. Believing that he had the pace before the race for the podium, brake issues soon flummoxed that, and all that you can really say is that he tried as hard as possible to work around it before finally being forced to concede defeat and pull in.

5 Franco Morbidelli

Started: 16th Finished: 10th

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Multiple times this year, Franco Morbidelli has looked on the verge of a breakthrough and then managed to self-sabotage. Doing the same thing at Valencia as he did at Sepang, his great race pace was once again neutered by a poor start. Not the result of a penalty this time but rather a bad qualifying compromised by missing out on a Q2 spot by a few hundredths of a second, he needs to do better on Saturdays to show us what he’s still capable of on Sundays.

5 Aleix Espargaro

Started: 10th Finished: DNF

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Setting out to fight for third in the championship, it wasn’t to be through no fault of Espargaro’s. Forced to pit early due to an engine problem (an old issue for Aprilia but one that hasn’t cropped up in a long time), it was a bitter end to the year for him, even if it was out of his control.

4.5 Marco Bezzecchi

Started: 18th Finished: 11th

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Despite being quite content with where he finished, rookie of the year Bezzecchi has left us expecting more from his race results than coming home outside the top 10. But, with a complicated Saturday punctuated by a burnt-to-a-crisp Ducati in FP3 that delayed his whole day, it’s hard to imagine that a much-better result would have been possible from 18th, especially at a circuit where it’s notoriously hard to make an overtake.

4 Marc Marquez

Started: 2nd Finished: DNF

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In theory a terrible result for someone who had pre-race podium expectations, it actually looked like that would be possible for Marquez until he fell out of the race. But with the six-time champion admitting afterwards that he was battling against not just his rivals but his bike, thanks to an unspecified technical issue, then it gets a little more hopeful for him – by hinting that his old ability to overcome problems is very much on its way back.

4 Fabio Di Giannantonio

Started: 19th Finished: 15th

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Hoping for more to finish the year at a track where he’s always been strong, a points-scoring finish is perhaps not the worst case scenario for rookie of the year runner-up Di Giannantonio – but given that it came at the expense of those in front of him more than his own pace, it was yet another weekend to not get too excited about. He’s one of the few riders who is both staying at the team he’s with but also very happy to put 2022 behind him now.

3.5 Alex Marquez

Started: 15th Finished: 17th

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At the end of a Honda career that’s went from the occasional big highs to regular lows, Alex Marquez’s best hope for his final race would have been to try and aim for at least a bit of an average result – but instead, he did the wrong thing and parked it in the gravel yet again (tying in the process with fellow Honda rider Pol Espargaro for third-most crashes of the season). It’s been a tough year, and remounting and at least finishing the race shows that he’s still motivated, but it’s still less than ideal.

3 Johann Zarco

Started: 9th Finished: DNF

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Ending his consistent run of form of late with a DNF definitely wasn’t in Johann Zarco’s plans. Conditions were different from practice for sure, something evidenced by the high number of fallers, but as one of the more experienced riders on the grid, the Frenchman’s fall wasn’t ideal – and he’s lucky that his points weren’t needed to contribute to the team’s top independent status bid.

3 Jack Miller

Started: 3rd Finished: DNF

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There’s something almost fitting about the way that Jack Miller’s final Ducati race came to a crashing end, given that it rounded out his time with the factory: blisteringly fast on time attack, able to get stuck into the fight for the win, but ultimately inconsistent. His error in Sunday’s final outing was an unforced one given the group he was comfortably a part of.

3 Cal Crutchlow

Started: 17th Finished: 16th

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Potentially another final MotoGP race for Crutchlow following his third retirement from the premier class, it’s probably fair to suggest that team boss Razlan Razali would have rather he came home in the squad’s final Yamaha outing a few seconds slower than Crutchlow planned rather than nearly a full lap down on race winner Rins following a crash.

2 Pol Espargaro

Started: 21st Finished: DNF

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Sometimes you’ve got to commend a racer for putting it all on the line even when there’s no need to – but sometimes discretion is the better part of valour, too, and cruising around at the back (somewhere he’s spent plenty of time already this year) just to see a chequered flag might have been the best strategy for Espargaro on Sunday. Instead, he threw his Honda at the scenery – and Tuesday’s return to KTM (in its Gas Gas guise) simply cannot come quickly enough for him.

2 Darryn Binder

Started: 23rd Finished: DNF

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Despite all pre-season expectations, direct-from-Moto3 rookie Darryn Binder has impressed in 2022 and should translate his new skills into a successful Moto2 season next year. But he’s also headed the crash statistics from all three classes this year by a healthy margin and, really, seeing the chequered flag would have been the smartest option in his final (for now, at least) MotoGP race.

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