From the moment MotoGP’s 2026 Dutch Grand Prix weekend began, the sweet-turning Aprilia looked miles faster than anything else around Assen.
So those who made the best use of that bike – and those who managed to threaten its superiority with lesser bikes – score pretty well in my book as I step in for Val on rankings duty for one event only while he’s at Formula 1’s Austrian GP.
And those who didn’t capitalise on the RS-GP’s pace don’t fare so well.
Agree or disagree? Want to see if Matt can go off down as many tangents as Val? Leave your comments on this post in The Race Members’ Club and Matt will reply in a one-off stand-in Q&A appearance later this week.
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: 1st
An Ai Ogura grand prix win has seemed inevitable for so long now, it’s easy to forget he’s only a season and a half into his MotoGP career.
He does still lose too much time in the opening laps, and that probably cost him a double win given how quickly he gained on victorious Trackhouse team-mate Raul Fernandez once he’d cleared Fabio Di Giannantonio for second in the sprint.
The main race showed what would’ve happened with a longer distance – as low as sixth at one point, Ogura simply hacked past everyone ahead and left them behind.
His momentum is massive right now. A title bid really isn’t a mad idea.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 4th
The only rider to give the Trackhouse Aprilias a proper headache all weekend.
There’s no shame in not being able to hold off Ogura in the sprint – the impressive thing was staying clear of the works Aprilias and being comfortably best Ducati.
Di Giannantonio was wrong-footed into Turn 1 on Sunday and had to scrap hard to regain ground – one and a half times in fact, given his (fair enough, under the wording of the rules) long lap penalty for not giving up enough time after cutting the chicane while divebombing Marc Marquez.
He still came back from that to be top Ducati again, and show race pace that suggests he could’ve hung with the Aprilias had he been with them on lap one.
Maybe a Diggia title bid isn’t a mad idea either…
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 2nd
I’m with Fernandez in his “sometimes they’re making our sport very boring” stance on the track limits lap deletion that cost him pole, and he certainly used the resultant “bad energy” well with an incisive ride to another sprint victory.
There really wasn’t a lot wrong with his weekend at all, and he gets credit for outperforming the works Aprilias too.
He just wasn’t as fast as Ogura when it really mattered.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: DNF
Pedro Acosta spent much of the weekend not knowing when his KTM might next abruptly cut out on him, or when – as he revealed after his Sunday retirement – he might lose feeling in his hand.
“Every day is a surprise,” as he said after the sprint. His recovery from 15th to ninth after his early error in the sprint was neatly accomplished and the battle he had with the works Ducatis for the portion of the grand prix in which both his arms were functional was classic KTM era Acosta elbows-out overachievement.
Imagine what he’ll do when the carpal tunnel syndrome he’s kept under the radar is resolved. Imagine what he’ll do when he’s on a bike that he can trust to keep running.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: 5th
Fifth in the grand prix would be a remarkable result for Alex Marquez if all he was battling was being in his first full race weekend back since a savage crash and horrible injury that happened just a month and a half ago.
But to add to that challenge, he also left a large chunk of his arm skin in a gravel trap in his very nasty Friday crash.
Marquez and Gresini managed the weekend very well from there.
He proved his pace and sufficient fitness with his times in Saturday morning practice, sat out qualifying to save energy then went into the sprint just with the intention of lapping safely and finishing.
Yet he picked his way through the midfield and still got 13th on a day when no one would’ve criticised him for being far lower.
He wasn’t sure if his Sunday activity would last beyond the warm-up. Mid-race, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to finish.
Yet there he still was, battling with (and beating) his brother, advancing up the field like it was a totally normal race weekend, and only losing fourth to Di Giannantonio on the final lap. Heroic.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: 6th
When you see a KTM tagging along with a lead pack, it’s usually Acosta’s. But after Acosta’s Saturday error and Sunday retirement, KTM was still in the hunt for ‘best non-Aprilia’ honours with Enea Bastianini.
Eighth in the sprint was the more impressive ride than sixth in the grand prix in terms of how close he stayed to the lead train, with attrition playing more of a role on Sunday. Definitely one of his stronger KTM weekends, though.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: 8th
“Long, difficult, not really enjoyable,” was Fabio Quartararo’s summary of a grand prix in which he was battling arm pump that he blamed on having to wrestle an uncompetitive Yamaha into fast corners.
But thanks to a qualifying performance that was a thing of angry beauty (and an incisive first lap), Quartararo was high enough up the field that he could still hang on to a top 10 finish even when in discomfort.
If you’re among those who feel Quartararo only bothers to give his best in 2026 when he thinks it’s a slightly better track for Yamaha, you can definitely file this one under ‘gave it a good go’.
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: DNF
A combination of making slightly heavy weather of his situation and being a bit unlucky meant Pecco Bagnaia didn’t actually come away with much from a weekend on which he was generally faster than team-mate Marc Marquez.
Marquez certainly didn’t make life easy for him in the sprint when Bagnaia was trying to regain ground lost at the start, and dropping back behind his team-mate in the final results due to a track limits penalty was annoying.
He was on course for fourth and ‘best non-Aprilia’ honours on Sunday after another big dice with Marquez when he hit brake problems that at least gave him chance to race home to his newborn baby 15 minutes sooner.
Qualifying: 1st Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 3rd
A weekend on which Jorge Martin finally took his first Aprilia pole, and in which he took the championship lead, and yet he never really looked like a convincing pacesetter at any point.
He still feels he lacks both affinity with this bike and fitness, and that was obvious in the way that whenever he led a race, it looked like only a matter of time before he lost that lead.
Fifth and third just isn’t really a good enough haul from a weekend when the Aprilia was this good, though. Damage limitation and salvaging solid results won’t keep him in the points lead for long with properly fast opposition looming behind him.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: 7th
A rare Marquez off-weekend on a track he doesn’t really enjoy and at which he never looked super-comfortable or competitive all weekend. He called the sprint a “safe mode” race and it was clear the savage outcomes from crashes this weekend – including for his brother – were on his mind.
He slides down the rankings because he was the third-fastest Ducati rider at best, and that’s below the standard he’s set for himself. As much as this was a big opportunity wasted for the factory Aprilia riders, Martin’s lack of pace and Marco Bezzecchi’s crash meant you could call it a wasted chance on Marquez’s side to take more points out of them.
And yet he’s still comfortably in the top half of these rankings because on an ostensibly off-the-pace weekend, and while allegedly riding in “safe mode”, he used plenty of feisty racecraft to launch himself higher up the order than his pace really merited and then made anyone who wanted to pass him really, really work for it.
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: 9th
There wasn’t actually much between Quartararo and Yamaha team-mate Alex Rins in race pace this weekend, and the Sunday attrition meant Rins got ninth place from the sort of quietly decent race that might usually only be worth a point or two.
He couldn’t produce anything like Quartararo’s magic in qualifying, though.
Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: DNF
Until Sunday, Toprak Razgatlioglu was right down near the very bottom of these rankings.
A track limits lap deletion played a role in him being last on the grid, but wasn’t the only reason. Struggling to get the right electronics set-up and therefore ending up with a Yamaha that neither braked nor accelerated very well, Razgatlioglu looked on course for one of his least convincing MotoGP weekends yet.
The grand prix was a very different story. A storming first lap got him on the cusp of the top 10, right with Quartararo, and he looked absolutely capable of staying there until extreme chatter ended his race.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: 10th
Only the third-best Honda in qualifying and a long way off team-mate Joan Mir’s pace there.
But as Luca Marini was capable of completing a lap without throwing his bike down the road, he was able to rise up the order a little in the races and come away with two respectable results – especially considering he picked up some aero damage in the first-lap traffic jam in the GP.
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 11th Grand Prix: 14th
Diogo Moreira cost himself a chance of another impressive weekend with the Q1 crash that prevented him from taking Mir’s place as the Honda in Q2
And then he was robbed of a chance to do much over the Sunday race distance when Franco Morbidelli wandered into him at the first corner and left the LCR Honda short of plenty of aero.
His sprint pace was decent, though. He just needs a clear run to have a chance at the kind of starring early-race cameos he’s managed lately, and that didn’t happen at Assen.
Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 19th Grand Prix: 16th
Another physical track where it’s hard to make an impression if you’re a 40-year-old veteran returning unexpectedly after three years off the grid just to help out some old friends.
Battling with Augusto Fernandez in the sprint at least stopped Crutchlow from being lonely, even if the Yamaha tester did beat him right at the end.
Sunday’s race was brewing nicely though with his first-lap progress up to 17th, but once a so-far unspecified technical problem kicked in, he simply got out of everyone’s way and headed for the pits for repairs.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: DNF
Friday’s pace suggested Marco Bezzecchi was the clear favourite for the Assen weekend. Yet he was only third in qualifying, ended the sprint off the podium (and having never looked like he’d make it on there) and then had that horrible high-speed crash early in the grand prix.
Even amid the Friday optimism, Bezzecchi did argue that his bike wasn’t as stable as it might appear from the outside.
But ultimately, there’s a strong chance that for all the mixed-up championship positions right now, this is still basically a Bezzecchi vs Marquez title fight at heart.
And on a weekend when Marquez was off the pace – but with a weekend at the Sachsenring that he’s expected to dominate coming up next – Bezzecchi scored zero on a Sunday again and was kept off the podium by satellite bikes on Saturday. And that’s an undoubted championship blow.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: 15th
Fernandez’s wildcard races are all about testing for Yamaha not results, but it didn’t feel like he got much value out of this one at all – unless you’re really excited by his one inherited grand prix point.
With wildcards soon to be banned, maybe it’ll go down in history as the last wildcard point. But in which case, an underwhelming way to earn it.
Unable to pin down a set-up he felt good with all weekend, beating Crutchlow in their close battle for 18th in the sprint was either a highlight because at least Fernandez had some company on track to race with or a lowlight because given how rusty Crutchlow still must be, Fernandez should’ve been well clear of him.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 11th
Brad Binder was absolutely raging at the tyre pressure penalty that dropped him from ninth to 11th in the grand prix, because he hadn’t seen the pressure warning because his dash was blocked by a track limits warning message that wouldn’t go away.
On paper, ninth was one of his best results of this miserable year. But regardless of the result, he was just a long way off what KTM stablemates Bastianini and Acosta were finding from the bike this weekend.
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 12th
Pretty underwhelming outcomes for Jack Miller from a weekend when all the other Yamahas ended up in or very near to the top 10 at different points.
That he didn’t get a similar chance to shine was mostly out of his hands – a broken brake bracket very early in the sprint and chatter in the grand prix – but having to qualify on his spare bike after a crash didn’t do him any favours either.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 13th
“You can’t say ‘oh I’m fit, but I’m not performing because I’m not fit’. It’s one or the other,” mused Maverick Vinales’ Tech3 team boss Guenther Steiner.
“‘Oh, I’m fit.’ So why isn’t the performance there like when you were fit? ‘Oh, because I’m not fit.’ This is a contradiction.”
Cue a weekend of being off the pace and putting it down to lacking the strength and fitness to handle particular changes of direction. But then Vinales, in the next breath, ruled out pausing racing again because he feels being on the bike is a good measure of his fitness and the best way to get better.
That’s not a strategy that’s going to get Vinales a 2027 seat, judging by his boss’s comments.
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: DNF
Battling into Q2 and then 10th on the grid on a weekend when none of the Hondas ever really looked competitive was a great achievement.
Shunting on lap one of both races was a staggering waste of that effort.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: DNF
At least Morbidelli got further into the races than Mir before crashing.
Struggling to find any other positives, though.
Slowest Ducati rider, and penalised for dangerously dawdling on the racing line in front of Bastianini during the important bit of practice, Morbidelli clattered into Moreira at the first corner of the main race and then got some assertive treatment back from Miller further around the lap.
Then he made a bit of progress before chucking it away with another crash.