MotoGP’s 2026 season kicked off in spectacular fashion with the first points-paying event of the season – a sprint that featured a phenomenal duel (with an admittedly controversial resolution) and a surprise first-time winner.
Here’s our wrap-up of who will be feeling good and not so good coming out of the 13-lap contest.
Winner: Pedro Acosta
One of the most overdue first wins in the history of MotoGP, even if it won’t statistically count as a first win. Whatever. We know what we saw.
Acosta’s triumph took a Marco Bezzecchi crash and a Marc Marquez penalty, but it’s pretty remarkable he was anywhere near in the vicinity to benefit.
The KTM RC16 just did not look all that strong in pre-season testing, nor in Q2 earlier in the day. Yes, Acosta has continued to show up his accomplished team-mates all throughout, but this looked beyond him and the bike.
He has had plenty of great rides in MotoGP already. He has been great more often than not. But this is maybe the first time MotoGP rider Pedro Acosta, aged 21, has looked terrifying.
Loser: Tech3 KTM
Guenther Steiner’s first official race in charge of the team will not have given him a ton of confidence in the line-up.
In a race won by a KTM, both Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales were total non-factors after getting Turn 3 wrong – badly wrong in Vinales’s case, as he got sucked in by Fabio Quartararo’s slipstream – on the opening lap.
Both had already disappointed in qualifying. And, OK, Acosta is clearly out of reach for other KTM riders right now, but it wasn’t just him overshadowing the Tech3s. Brad Binder – the other honorary ‘winner’ of today’s proceedings – secured an important result (sixth) with a professional job despite a clear early-2026 pace deficit to Acosta.
Winner: Ducati 2027
So, Pecco Bagnaia didn’t even have a particularly bad day. He was outmatched in Q1, forced into mistakes by the fact the laptimes of not only Raul Fernandez but Franco Morbidelli were beyond him, but he recovered well enough in the race itself – though being pounced on by Fabio Di Giannantonio and losing eighth place late on was alarming.
But there’s a good chance even Bagnaia himself will look at the classification at one point today, glance and positions 1 and 2, sigh and mumble ‘yeah, I get it’.
Losers: Fabio Di Giannantonio and Alex Marquez
The second- and third-strongest Ducati riders this weekend, Di Giannantonio and Marquez removed themselves from contention after going side by side into Turn 3.
Marquez checked up to avoid clattering into Fernandez, both went well wide, Marquez was then compromised further when he tried to rejoin quickly and got forced off by Johann Zarco having a moment on the inside.
Neither Marquez nor Di Giannantonio were particularly keen to ‘name names’ in discussing the incident after the race. But both said enough to believe that both consider themselves the wronged party.
Marquez claimed he got squeezed by Di Giannantonio on corner entry and had to either roll wide or cause a three-bike crash. “Nothing more to do, I had no more options. I think trying to defend a position from the outside is not the most intelligent thing in the first corners.
Di Giannantonio went to the stewards to make a plea for stronger opening-lap sanctions.
“If we don’t respect each other enough, I think race direction should help us with much-much stronger penalties on the first two corners, to help us to be more clever, more in control, more cautious, let’s say. Today I think we have been lucky. We avoided a potential huge crash between me, Alex and Raul.”
A likely podium went begging for one (Di Giannantonio), an almost nailed-on top-five for another (Marquez).
Winner: Trackhouse Aprilia
More Raul Fernandez than Ai Ogura, but both deserve a mention here.
Ogura clearly just needed a better qualifying and better start, and on the evidence of his overall pace must target a podium tomorrow.
But Fernandez maybe did more with less potential. After a wind-and-rain compromised Friday, he was on paper a ‘must-progress’ among the Q1 entrants but still made it look stunningly easy, then followed up excellently in Q2, then kept up the level all race.
Loser: Marco Bezzecchi
Bezzecchi is the fastest rider on track this weekend, but nearly let pole slip in Q2 and then squandered a likely 12 points in the sprint.
Three crashes in three sessions was a little much for Saturday, though it would’ve been fine without crash number three – going too tight through Turn 8 as he tried to break away from Marc Marquez, nipping the white line on the inside and losing the front.
“It’s normal to make some mistakes,” Bezzecchi mused. “This is the difference between good riders and bad riders. At the end, today maybe I wasn’t the best one, because I made too many mistakes – but I cannot do it in a different way. We have to push all the time when we’re on the bike.”
A healthy enough way to look at it – we will probably have forgotten about these 12 points come season’s end. Still, unquestionably an opportunity lost.
Winners: The rookies
Toprak Razgatlioglu crashed and Diogo Moreira slipped down the order, but this was honestly quite convincing from both.
The LCR Honda debutant has looked a much faster ‘fourth rider’ in the Honda camp this weekend than predecessor Somkiat Chantra was for 99.5% of last season.
That was the bare minimum target, and as Moto2 champion Moreira was always expected to clear it with ease, but there was still something reassuringly assured in his run to 13th here.
Razgatlioglu was better still, even if his race was spoiled by a crash he “can’t accept” – triggered by what he described as persistent engine brake oddities that finally caused the rear to re-grip suddenly and led to him losing the front.
Before that, though, he had been running 15th, one place and half a second behind the lead Yamaha of Jack Miller. Fabio Quartararo’s dreadful start had helped the perception, but this was, to be clear, an absolutely unimpeachable level of pace by Razgatlioglu.