Winners and losers from MotoGP’s Misano sprint

Marc Marquez ran riot in the Misano MotoGP sprint - and he was the only rider who could really be particularly elated with how his San Marino Grand Prix Saturday has panned out.

Here are our winners and losers from the 13-lap dress rehearsal race.

Winner: Marc Marquez (1st)

Marquez had looked all through the weekend as the only rider with a real shot of stopping Bezzecchi - but it was still a surprise in the end, both that he succeeded and how easy he made it look.

After the sprint, he said that he thought a P2-P3 finish was on the cards with the soft rear. But with the medium, which he chose, "I was able to finish second-third... or victory!"

The difference-maker was the extra margin the medium granted him, seemingly in terms of the rear pushing the front, and he exploited it very well - blasting past Bezzecchi at the start and then breaking his counter-charge with a lap 11 1m30.7s scorcher. As long as Sunday's result is any kind of decent points haul, this weekend is a success.

Loser: Fabio Quartararo (21st)

Before going in too hard on Quartararo, it is important to point out - he is the only Yamaha rider who looks like doing anything of note this weekend, and he is clearly trying.

A crash is a crash, and it looked very clumsy, Quartararo trying to outfox Moreira but getting caught out under braking by what he described as "zero" rear support and running out of margin. But also a bit of a chapeau. There were a total of 11 sub-1m32s laps by Yamaha riders in this race - 10 of those were Quartararo after the crash, and the other one was Quartararo before the crash. The pace is there.

Loser: Pecco Bagnaia (13th)

“Honestly [it’s] difficult to speak about feeling when I don’t have any” was how Bagnaia opened his post-race debrief. We didn’t need him to tell us that though - the lack of feeling and control meant it was yet another fruitless sprint for the Ducati rider. 

Given Misano is a track Bagnaia has done countless laps around in the past, he could have been forgiven for expecting a slightly different outcome from this weekend. Instead, it looks to be more of the same as he’s running out of things to try to escape his troubles aboard the GP26. 

“Really frustrated but also humiliated” was how Bagnaia summed up how his struggles have made him feel. A performance like this in front of a home crowd can’t have helped his overall confidence.

Winner: Jorge Martin (3rd)

Martin lost points to both of his main title rivals at the conclusion of the 13 laps - but it looked on Friday like he would be losing a lot more than this, which is effectively bare minimum.

He was very close to an unwanted Q1 ticket yesterday, but corrected some things on the bike and in his riding - though remained outmatched in qualifying trim.

"I cannot ride with the soft [rear]," Martin lamented. "That's why I am suffering in time attack. I feel it's pushing [the front] and everything gets so aggressive, and really difficult to manage the bike."

Hence the choice of the medium for the sprint - and it clearly worked, enabling him to pick off Fermin Aldeguer and Fabio Di Giannantonio en route to a comfortable podium, even if the front was "cooked" by the laps behind the latter.

Loser: Franco Morbidelli (12th)

A rare opportunity for a genuinely good weekend in what has been a profoundly forlorn season is being squandered here for Morbidelli, who does genuinely look pretty decent on pure pace.

But with a needless long lap penalty for impeding - imagine a long sigh in the middle of this sentence - meaning his Sunday is already compromised by default, perhaps the sprint was the big chance. Instead, he looked a bit timid over the first few corners, so got roughed up by Diogo Moreira and spent the rest of the race looking for a way back - which he never did find.

Loser: Raul Fernandez/Trackhouse (7th)

If Fernandez's assessment is accurate, this is much more of a Trackhouse entry than a Fernandez entry - as he says his Q2 was hamstrung by a "problem on both bikes", which meant he was three tenths slower than he had been in Q1. It had a huge knock-on on his grid position and meant his race prospects proved extremely limited as, after barging past Aldeguer, he got stuck behind Acosta and couldn't get the front tyre in a good enough state to give the KTM man anything to worry about.

The Aprilia is clearly better than seventh place here, but on Trackhouse's side the reliability could certainly be improved.