It's finally happened: six-time MotoGP champion Marc Marquez has finally won a race on a bike that’s not a Honda, after a half-season full of effort trying to take the Gresini Ducati to the top step of the podium was finally realised at Aragon on Sunday.
But even after an absolute masterclass that left new title leader Jorge Martin forced to settle for second, Marc wasn’t the only Marquez making headlines, as a collision between his brother Alex and reigning world champion Pecco Bagnaia dealt a big blow to the factory Ducati rider's title hopes on a weekend that will have huge championship implications.
That, of course, meant plenty to work from when it came to putting together this weekend's MotoGP rider rankings.
Scoring the grid in order based on their performances not just in the main event but also Saturday’s sprint race, it’s obviously all subjective - but comes not just from riders' final race results but also takes into account factors including the machinery they’re on and the pre-race expectations from them.
1 Marc Marquez
Started: 1st Sprint: 1st Finished: 1st
Marquez didn’t just win the Aragon Grand Prix, he dominated it.
He topping every single session except the wet warm-up, which he sat out, and it was apparent even before he took pole position that he was the man to beat. He didn't disappoint.
Sure, it came at one of his favourite tracks, and sure, a lot of things went his way, but don’t let that take anything at all away from what was one of the most dominant performances we've seen in MotoGP in a very long time. It was an old-school Marquez weekend, and his rivals will be hoping that there aren't a whole lot more like it in the near future.
2 Jorge Martin
Started: 4th Sprint: 2nd Finished: 2nd
Considering everyone expected Marquez domination pretty early on in the weekend, it's testament to Martin's rapidly improving skillset and temperament that he clocked on to that fact and stopped trying to beat his fellow Spaniard.
Title points were far more valuable to him at Aragon, especially as it became apparent that Bagnaia was having a disaster, and he might well be ending the weekend just as delighted as the guy above him on the podium was.
3 Pedro Acosta
Started: 2nd Sprint: 3rd Finished: 3rd
After a dip in form, some young riders would struggle to get back to competitiveness quickly (just look at Fermin Aldeguer in Moto2).
But Acosta is a tough nut and it showed at Aragon as he cruised to a pair of podiums just to underline to his naysayers that he still deserves to be considered a generational talent. It's all the more impressive that it came on a weekend where conditions didn't particularly suit the KTM and where plenty of more experienced racers made their fair share of errors and mistakes.
4 Brad Binder
Started: 7th Sprint: 6th Finished: 4th
Given that it looked set to be a rather tough weekend for KTM on Friday, really the only thing that takes anything away from Binder's performances is that he wasn't the top KTM.
Aided a little on Sunday by the two podium contenders in front of him crashing out, he was nonetheless still there to pick up the pieces when they weren't. A solid no-frills, no drama Binder weekend.
5 Fabio Di Giannantonio
Started: 16th Sprint: 15th Finished: 8th
Considering that he started the weekend unsure if he'd even be able to race at Aragon thanks to his injuries from Austria, it's not really much of a surprise to hear that Di Giannantonio was celebrating Sunday's top-eight finish as if it was a race win.
Di Giannantonio was aided a little bit by low-grip conditions that seemed to work well for his GP23 bike, but take nothing at all away from his ability to ride through the pain barrier and remind everyone why he's set to get a factory Ducati next season.
6 Enea Bastianini
Started: 14th Sprint: 7th Finished: 5th
Nothing dramatic from Bastianini, but not a bad weekend either.
He sabotaged himself somewhat with a poor qualifying that meant his usual charge through the pack wasn't enough to put him in the fight for podiums, and once again reiterated that he's not a serious 2024 title challenger - even if he did manage something of a damage limitation job.
7 Alex Rins
Started: 21st Sprint: 17th Finished: 9th
No, you didn't misread that: Rins really did bring a Yamaha home inside the top 10 in Sunday's main race.
By far his best Yamaha result so far and coming despite still carrying a slew of injuries, Rins outclassed team-mate Fabio Quartararo all weekend and reminded everyone that there's still tons of talent in him, even if multiple factors largely outside his control have hidden it for the best part of two seasons now.
8 Franco Morbidelli
Started: 6th Sprint: DNF Finished: 6th
Progress continues to come for Morbidelli, although he was left beating himself up somewhat after the race about mistakes he felt he's still making as he continues to play catch up from his lack of a pre-season.
He needs to polish out the errors like his crash in the sprint before we can start to reconsider him as the title contender he was in 2020, but he's definitely making progress week by week, and might spring a surprise next time out at his home track of Misano.
9 Aleix Espargaro
Started: 11th Sprint: DNF Finished: 10th
This was obviously a tough weekend for Aprilia all round, so the best that Espargaro can say about the weekend is that he ended Sunday’s race as the top of the internal standings - even if that's very much putting a silver lining on things given just how tough a weekend it was for him and the rest of the factory's riders.
Espargaro's crash out of the sprint was unfortunate, but he was hardly the only one to have problems starting races this weekend. And while his Sunday issues might have been bad, they weren't quite what his team-mate was suffering through.
10 Taka Nakagami
Started: 19th Sprint: 14th Finished: 11th
It’s got to stick in Nakagami's throat just a little bit that on the weekend where it was made official that he won't be a full-time MotoGP racer next year, he once again ended Sunday's race as top Honda.
He's been highly consistent of late, and LCR Honda's loss will be the gain of its bike development programme if he can bring the same pace that was on display at Aragon into next year's new testing role.
11 Augusto Fernandez
Started: 19th Sprint: 12th Finished: 12th
Finally, there are signs of some slow but steady progress back toward his true potential for Fernandez.
Aided at Aragon by a new crew chief, former Andrea Dovizioso and Enea Bastianini engineer Alberto Girabola, that move paid off very quickly indeed for Fernandez. And while it might be too late to save his MotoGP career, it stands him in good stead for securing a new role as Yamaha's test rider.
12 Miguel Oliveira
Started: 8th Sprint: 5th Finished: DNF
Another racer who somewhat failed to deliver on their potential at Aragon, Olivera's decent qualifying and fantastic sprint result meant that it looked like he was set to comfortably end a tough weekend for Aprilia as its best-placed rider.
It didn't work out that way for him though, thanks to a crash fairly early on in Sunday's main event that left the Portuguese racer looking on frustratedly from the sidelines.
13 Marco Bezzecchi
Started: 13th Sprint: 10th Finished: 7th
Yes, Marco Bezzecchi finished the weekend with a pair of not bad results in the end - but he was still the last Ducati home in Sunday's race, behind even injured teammate Di Giannantonio.
It seems like the year-old GP23 machine had something a little bit extra to give at Aragon, based on its all-round results, but if it did, then Bezzecchi didn't find it.
14 Fabio Quartararo
Started: 17th Sprint: 8th Finished: DNF
On one hand, Quartararo had a great sprint race, sticking the factory Yamaha inside the points, somewhere that he arguably has no place being and something that has happened only three times previously this season.
Yet his crash on Sunday meant the weekend ended with a feeling of missed opportunity, especially when his team-mate Rins was able to take his best Yamaha result yet inside the top 10.
15 Johann Zarco
Started: 10th Sprint: DNF Finished: 13th
There were few bigger surprises at Aragon than Zarco sticking Honda into Q2, but credit to him as he did so on merit alone.
However, while the one-lap speed might be improving, it's hard to sustain that in the races - as he proved twice. First crashing out of the sprint and then coming home in a decent-but-not-great 13th in the main event behind his team-mate, it wasn't quite the fairytale ending that it seems Honda just isn't ready to deliver yet.
16 Joan Mir
Started: 22nd Sprint: 18th Finished: 14th
Another pretty average weekend for Mir, one where he wasn't Honda's best rider but was far from its worst - a situation that seems to be the only option for him if he wants to make it all the way to the chequered flag, because pushing any harder generally ends in the gravel.
He wasn't a million miles behind the satellite machines ahead of him and, at a stage in the season where everyone at Honda seems to be on a different spec of machine, he wasn't too disappointed with where he ended up either.
17 Jack Miller
Started: 15th Sprint: 13th Finished: 15th
First of all, it's worth noting that Miller's final finishing position should have been considerably better than 15th, actually taking the flag inside the top 10 only to then get hit with a tyre pressure penalty.
But even then, coming home as the third KTM instead of the fourth (where he was classified) wasn't exactly a world of difference, especially when the manufacturer's rookie was once again on the podium in both races. One to forget for Miller.
18 Luca Marini
Started: 20th Sprint: 16th Finished: 17th
You’ve got to give Marini credit: he might be having a torrid time at Honda right now, but he's not just still smiling, he's working hard to contribute to its development.
Forced to start Sunday's main event from the pitlane after a technical issue on the grid, at least he made it all the way to the chequered flag, even if he only just avoided getting lapped by his factory Honda predecessor Marc Marquez.
19 Raul Fernandez
Started: 9th Sprint: 11th Finished: 16th
The best thing that can be said about Fernandez's weekend is that it wasn't the worst experienced by an Aprilia rider. (But it wasn’t a million miles away from it!)
Struggling all weekend long with grip issues both front and rear, he ended Sunday angry rather than upset as an old problem for Aprilia once again reared its head. Set to lead Trackhouse next year as its continuity rider, it'll be interesting to see if he can help fix what he clearly believes is one of the bike's fundamental flaws.
20 Pecco Bagnaia
Started: 3rd Sprint: 9th Finished: DNF
Bagnaia was obviously very unlucky not to visit the podium on Sunday thanks to the work of Alex Marquez, but the reality is that, while he might have been caught up in someone else's antics, he still had no place being there in the first place.
Two bad starts left him on the back foot in both races, and despite track conditions clearly complicating things for him and others that's no excuse for getting it so wrong so many times.
21 Alex Marquez
Started: 5th Sprint: 4th Finished: DNF
Sunday was hardly the first time that Marquez has been accused of being a tad too aggressive in a MotoGP race, but it'll certainly be the most infamous occasion should it cost Bagnaia a world title.
He might have escaped penalty for the move, but it was his mistake that left the door open and it was Marquez who knew he had to do whatever possible to keep Bagnaia behind him when the factory rider had so much more speed. The end result was avoidable had Marquez given up a little bit of space.
22 Maverick Vinales
Started: 12th Sprint: 19th Finished: DNF
There only ever seems to be one racer in MotoGP who gives up mid race because he's struggling with conditions, and it's Vinales.
Complaining after both races that he felt like he was about to crash in every corner, it was understandably a very tough weekend for Aprilia and its issues at low-grip circuits - but when everyone else on the grid has a 'finish or crash trying' mentality, Vinales continues to be a rather unusual outlier.
