Reigning world champion Pecco Bagnaia made the rest of the grid look pretty average in the Austrian Grand Prix as he powered off into the Red Bull Ring sunset.
However, with title rival Jorge Martin at least able to stay in contact with Bagnaia through both races (even if he couldn’t match him), the title battle remains close, separated by only a handful of points.
And of course, while attention might be on the front pair, there was the usual drama behind them - more, in fact, than there was at the front as the entertaining battle for fifth kept us awake during an otherwise quite tedious race.
That, of course, means lots of metrics to use to rank the riders.
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 their final race result but takes into account things like the machinery they’re on and the pre-race expectations from them.
1 Pecco Bagnaia
Started: 2nd Sprint: 1st Finished: 1st
There are a few tracks on the MotoGP calendar where Bagnaia is always likely to dominate. Jerez, Assen and the Red Bull Ring are his playgrounds, and he absolutely did not fail to deliver on this weekend’s trip to Austria.
Totally untouchable in both races and the ideal way to defend a title.
2 Jorge Martin
Started: 1st Sprint: 2nd Finished: 2nd
Martin’s main takeaway from the Red Bull Ring should be that he was able to carefully manage the gap in the championship standings to Bagnaia - because let’s face it, he wasn’t able to do the same thing in the races.
Simply not able to find enough to challenge the reigning champion on the day, he did what he needed to for the points.
3 Enea Bastianini
Started: 7th Sprint: 4th Finished: 3rd
In most circumstances, Enea Bastianini’s weekend would count as a solid one, but there’s one glaring issue: he had absolutely no answer at all for the two fellow Ducati riders ahead of him.
Yes, he takes a solid haul of points - but it might be the weekend that best demonstrates why he won’t be a title contender this year.
4 Aleix Espargaro
Started: 4th Sprint: 3rd Finished: 9th
Given previous form, an Aprilia has no business at all being on the podium at the Red Bull Ring, so it’s a testament to Aleix Espargaro that he was able to somehow make his way through the sprint pack early on and capitalise on others’ mistakes.
Unable to back it up to the same extent on Sunday, his ninth in the grand prix still factored into this being a very good weekend indeed and the best performance by anyone not on a Ducati.
5 Marc Marquez
Started: 3rd Sprint: DNF Finished: 4th
Marc Marquez’s results clearly should have been better at the Austrian Grand Prix. The six-time world champion threw away a potential podium on Saturday in the sprint through a mistake wholly of his own making, while his failure to properly engage his start devices on Sunday left him on a wrecking ball path through the field in the opening laps, which meant the podium battle ahead of him escaped. Not a terrible fourth place, but more was certainly on offer for him.
6 Marco Bezzecchi
Started: 9th Sprint: 8th Finished: 6th
Given where Marco Bezzecchi has been of late (floundering somewhat well outside the top 10), the Red Bull Ring feels like something of a welcome return to form.
Still very much up against it on a difficult GP23 machine that just isn’t performing well enough to be much more competitive, it’s nonetheless his first solid weekend in quite some time and hopefully a building block rather than a one-off.
7 Brad Binder
Started: 12th Sprint: 7th Finished: 5th
Brad Binder salvaging tough weekends for KTM using his extensive knowledge of the RC16 bike is becoming something of a trend amid the firm’s mid-season slump.
Though not even close to the results KTM would have been hoping for on home ground, at least Binder was able to get himself into the battle for the top six and ensure some TV coverage on an otherwise wholly forgettable weekend for the factory.
8 Maverick Vinales
Started: 6th Sprint: 11th Finished: 7th
Given what we expected from Aprilia at the Red Bull Ring, one of its toughest circuits, Maverick Vinales’ results would have been absolutely middle of the road fine if it wasn’t for the performances of his team-mate Espargaro, who was able to up the game considerably in both the sprint and in qualifying.
As a result, more perhaps should have been expected from Vinales than a few on-par results at the Austrian track.
9 Pol Espargaro
Started: 10th Sprint: 9th Finished: 11th
It’s never easy to be a race rusty wildcard jumping into the fray, and it’s harder still to do so on a bike that hasn’t been performing particularly well of late.
But, despite that (and aided by a strong test at the Red Bull Ring in recent weeks) Pol Espargaro was able to deliver some of KTM’s strongest results of its home weekend.
Clearly he’s still got it - and the Austrian GP was an important chance to show it, too.
10 Franco Morbidelli
Started: 8th Sprint: 6th Finished: 8th
There are two different ways to assess Franco Morbidelli’s weekend.
On one hand, he came home with two decent finishes, added points to the board, and is continuing to look increasingly competitive on the Pramac Ducati.
On the other, though, he was once again a long, long way from the other three GP24 machines that locked out Sunday’s podium - and doesn’t seem to be consistently closing the gap to them, either.
11 Alex Marquez
Started: 11th Sprint: 20th Finished: 10th
Taking over from Johann Zarco as Ducati’s rather invisible solid points scorer this season, Alex Marquez did just that on Sunday by riding a quiet but solid race.
He was unfortunate to not finish the first lap in the sprint thanks to the chaos of the new Red Bull Ring Turn 2 chicane, but he was able to bounce back with a strong enough performance to end the weekend on a relative high.
12 Taka Nakagami
Started: 22nd Sprint: 16th Finished: 14th
Any weekend where Taka Nakagami can emerge victorious in the ‘Japanese Cup’ battle is a good one right now, given that it’s the Yamahas and his fellow Hondas that we should be measuring him against.
The Red Bull Ring performance was a reminder of his abilities at a time when people are openly speculating about his future.
13 Pedro Acosta
Started: 14th Sprint: 10th Finished: 13th
Possibly the worst weekend so far for 2024’s exceptional rookie Pedro Acosta - but one that he was quite happy to take on the chin after the race, hoping that a poor showing at KTM’s home would emphasise to his bosses that the bike isn’t where it needs to be.
It’s hard to argue that his form wasn’t an RC16 performance issue, given all the results of late, and the inability to work around it like KTM veteran Binder is a reminder that Acosta very much remains a rookie.
14 Miguel Oliveira
Started: 13th Sprint: 13th Finished: 12th
A pretty uneventful weekend for the Portuguese racer at a track where the Aprilia wasn’t expected to work well. Miguel Oliveira barely even made it onto TV let alone into a decent finishing position.
At least he was able to avoid his Trackhouse team-mate Raul Fernandez’s technical woes and to score points on Sunday despite a lap one punt from Marc Marquez. It doesn’t seem like that incident significantly hampered his race given where we saw him slotting in over the rest of the weekend.
15 Augusto Fernandez
Started: 16th Sprint: DNF Finished: 15th
A pretty strong weekend for the Tech3 rider, even if he was denied a finish in the sprint thanks to technical issues.
But scoring points in the main race is a decent reminder that despite KTM’s woes, Augusto Fernandez can still be fast - and it couldn’t have come at a better time for him as he looks to secure a Yamaha test rider future.
16 Alex Rins
Started: 21st Sprint: DNF Finished: 16th
Although it might not seem like it on the bike, Alex Rins very much still looks physically broken, given that he can hardly walk across the paddock unassisted.
With that important context, the fact that he’s able to go out and beat Yamaha team-mate Fabio Quartararo on a tough circuit is testament to how something is finally starting to go right for him at the team, even if bad luck elsewhere is hiding that progress.
17 Luca Marini
Started: 18th Sprint: 17th Finished: DNF
It’s unfortunate for Luca Marini that he was one of a number of Hondas to face technical problems early on in the main race, because it actually looked like one of the rare occasions where he had the pace to raise his game a little bit.
Relatively fast in qualifying, an area where he’s struggled a little on the RC213V, and then decent if not exceptional in the sprint, issues as soon as the GP lights went out means we’ll never know what a full race could have delivered.
18 Raul Fernandez
Started: 20th Sprint: 14th Finished: DNF
We knew it was going to be a tough weekend for Aprilia, and that was reflected in Fernandez’s results in particular.
Still working to learn his way around the new 2024 spec RS-GP he only received at Silverstone two weeks ago, he was at even more of a disadvantage than the rest of the Aprilia flock - and any chance of at least a consolation prize was denied by yet another Trackhouse technical problem, something that’s becoming way too common.
19 Jack Miller
Started: 5th Sprint: 5th Finished: 19th
Another weekend where Jack Miller is able to turn excellent qualifying performance into a very decent sprint result - only to then completely mess it up on Sunday by throwing the bike down the road.
Hardly the first time we’ve seen this story play out from the Australian, and hardly what KTM would have wanted at its home race.
20 Johann Zarco
Started: 17th Sprint: 15th Finished: 21st
Unfortunately, we’ll never know what Zarco’s potential was in Sunday’s race, thanks to a technical problem that robbed him of power as soon as the lights went out and, according to the Frenchman, left him riding around hoping for rain and a flag to flag bike swap.
However, with a decent sprint run, it seems like he could have been at the very least thinking about points had things gone his way.
21 Lorenzo Savadori
Started: 24th Sprint: 18th Finished: 20th
A decent test rider wildcard from the Aprilia racer in which he inserted himself into the ‘Honda Cup’ battle and avoided finishing dead last. That’s something more impressive than it perhaps sounds on paper given that the laboratory bike he was riding is a long way away from being an actual race machine and given that, as R&D mules tend to do, it had more than a few mechanical issues over the course of the weekend.
22 Joan Mir
Started: 19th Sprint: 19th Finished: 17th
The silver lining of Joan Mir’s weekend is certainly that he saw two chequered flags, something that’s been all too rare in his recent performances.
But it’s also quite rare to see him beaten by other Hondas when he does make it to the end, and the very strong performance from Nakagami in particular should come as something of a performance red flag for the Repsol team, even if it’s likely to be an exception rather than the rule.
23 Fabio Quartararo
Started: 15th Sprint: 12th Finished: 18th
Look, we all know that Yamaha is in trouble, and that the Red Bull Ring was always going to exacerbate its issues with rear grip.
But, the first person you have to beat is your team-mate, and that’s something that Quartararo was unable to do on Sunday even despite Rins’ considerable physical disadvantage right now.
Not a lot more was expected of the 2021 world champion, but we thought he would at least be closer to Rins and closer to the points.
24 Stefan Bradl
Started: 23rd Sprint: DNF Finished: 22nd
A relatively standard issue test rider appearance for Stefan Bradl, even if sprint technical issues meant that he wasn’t able to see the chequered flag on Saturday.
For once, though, a stronger showing from the rest of Honda’s full-time squad meant he wasn’t able to get in the mix with them and ended the race last bike home, behind even the Aprilia prototype of Savadori.
