Coming into this weekend’s British Grand Prix, there was certainly the usual anticipation given that Silverstone tends to produce a different winner every year - but even with that in mind, an utterly dominant double victory (including a first-ever sprint podium) for Enea Bastianini certainly wasn’t a prediction many will have made.
It's exactly what Bastianini delivered, though, inserting himself back into the title fight as both Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia struggled to keep him in check.
That, of course, means lots of metrics to use to rank the grid on performances in the first weekend post-summer break.
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.
1 Jorge Martin
Started: 4th Sprint: 2nd Finished: 2nd
Being prepared to settle for podiums and give up on victory ambitious in order to keep championship hopes alive is a sign of Martin’s ever-increasing maturity, and on a weekend where it would have been possible to concede points, he came away with a well-deserved championship lead.
He doesn’t need to lead every lap to win the title, and he seems to have finally realised that.
2 Enea Bastianini
Started: 3rd Sprint: 1st Finished: 1st
As MotoGP weekends go, Bastianini’s was pretty much perfect.
Though a textbook Bestia race on Sunday - powering his way though the field and using his late-race pace to deliver an excellent win - brought the big points, it was actually his sprint performance that was the standout, given that it wasn’t just his first win but his first-ever podium in the shorter races, demonstrating a whole other side of his skillset.
3 Fabio Di Giannantonio
Started: 10th Sprint: 9th Finished: 5th
Yet another strong weekend for Di Giannantonio where he’s shown that he very much deserves to be on the MotoGP grid and where he’s highlighted how extra support from Ducati (and a GP25 next year) is now becoming a necessity rather than a luxury for the Italian brand.
There’s still so much more potential to unlock from him, and Silverstone’s battles with Marc and Alex Marquez are just a hint of what’s to come.
4 Pecco Bagnaia
Started: 2nd Sprint: DNF Finished: 3rd
It’s hard to not see Bagnaia’s weekend in the context of his sprint race crash - given his unforced error cost him the lead of the championship race, it was indeed the lynchpin of his trip to Silverstone.
He limited the damage to a faster Martin somewhat on Sunday, but it wasn’t what he needed even if it’s not one of his favoured tracks.
5 Marc Marquez
Started: 7th Sprint: DNF Finished: 4th
Silverstone has served up perhaps the best example of the disadvantage that the GP23 machine is at compared to the current top spec, because it felt like Marc Marquez was unable to even think about keeping up with the trio in front of him on Sunday.
Obviously that wasn’t helped by his sprint race crash, but nonetheless it felt like a big part of the weekend was very much out of his control.
6 Aleix Espargaro
Started: 1st Sprint: 3rd Finished: 6th
On one hand, a podium in the sprint and a top six on Sunday isn’t something to be sniffed at - but given that Silverstone is one of Aprilia’s designated ‘go-fast’ circuits, Espargaro would have been expecting more than what he left with.
Not quite competitive over race distance all weekend despite his blistering qualifying performance, sixth was the best available but more had been hoped for.
7 Brad Binder
Started: 6th Sprint: 4th Finished: DNF
It’s a shame that we didn’t get to see what Binder might have been capable of on Sunday thanks to a technical problem that very nearly saw him struck by others on the start line as the lights went out.
Given Saturday’s strong sprint race showing, you’d have expected him to be right in there with the battle for the top six and maybe even on the tail end of the podium battle.
8 Alex Marquez
Started: 5th Sprint: 6th Finished: 7th
A strong and consistent weekend for Alex Marquez, if not quite an exceptional one, on the heels of his sprint win last year.
He’s likely a tad disappointed considering 12 months ago, but he nonetheless delivered a fairly solid performance and there’s not much to be upset about with a pair of top-seven finishes and decent points on the board.
9 Marco Bezzecchi
Started: 12th Sprint: DNF Finished: 8th
Perhaps not quite the weekend that Bezzecchi wanted, but nonetheless it was a fairly solid ending after a tough start.
Wiped out by friend Morbidelli in the opening corner of the sprint, it left him battered and bruised and means that a decent top-eight finish on Sunday was a little bit of damage limitation rather than the real mark of his level.
10 Pedro Acosta
Started: 9th Sprint: 5th Finished: 9th
There was an element of something being left on the table this weekend by Acosta, which is perhaps a little bit of an unusual experience for him in his incredible MotoGP rookie season.
He was faster than his P9 result showed, as demonstrated with a decent (especially given the damage to the bike's aero) sprint, but it didn't quite all come together in the end.
11 Fabio Quartararo
Started: 18th Sprint: 11th Finished: 11th
Pretty much what we expected from a Yamaha that’s still very much experimental at this point in the season, with new components arriving and Quartararo working more on long-term plans than on this weekend’s results.
With that in mind, he wasn’t too upset with where he landed. He clearly wants more, but this isn’t the time just yet to deliver it.
12 Jack Miller
Started: 11th Sprint: 7th Finished: 12th
A standard-issue Miller weekend, where he started out with blisteringly fast time attack mode then faded once the lights went out.
Faster (as expected) in the sprint than on Sunday, he was overall once again outclassed by both Binder and Acosta, but that’s become something of an expectation these days.
13 Maverick Vinales
Started: 8th Sprint: 8th Finished: 13th
Given the pace of team-mate Espargaro all weekend and given that we know that Vinales goes well at Silverstone, it was disappointing to see something of an anonymous weekend.
Complaining about rear tyre issues that left him struggling, the reality is that the old Vinales issue of poor starts didn’t help the case either.
14 Remy Gardner
Started: 22nd Sprint: 18th Finished: 18th
Thrown into the deep end once again as a replacement rider, this time for wildcard test rider Cal Crutchlow rather than Alex Rins, World Superbike star Gardner once again delivered a very decent performance on the factory Yamaha.
Sure, he struggled with tyre drop in the race, but he’s very obviously getting to grips with the M1 even as he’s jumping from production to prototype and back.
15 Joan Mir
Started: 20th Sprint: 16th Finished: DNF
Mir probably should have been the top Honda performer this weekend, had it not been for a technical problem on Sunday that left him sitting on the sidelines.
He was looking competitive up until a warning light on the dash forced him to park it - but there are more signs that things are slowly improving now.
16 Miguel Oliveira
Started: 15th Sprint: 10th Finished: DNF
Something of an invisible man all weekend at Silverstone even as other Aprilias made headlines, it’s clear that Oliveira still very much hasn’t got to grips with the bike the way that the Italian factory’s more seasoned performers have.
More was probably on offer on Sunday, mind you - but thanks to his team-mate we didn’t get much of a chance to see what could have been.
17 Johann Zarco
Started: 16th Sprint: 14th Finished: 14th
Top Honda again means another decent weekend of performances for Zarco across both the sprint and the main race.
Perhaps a little assisted by Mir’s technical problem into the top spot, it nonetheless confirms that the two of them are the Japanese factory’s star performers right now.
18 Luca Marini
Started: 19th Sprint: 15th Finished: 17th
An unlucky weekend for Marini, who should have been able to add somewhat to his limited points tally until a tyre pressure penalty robbed him of 15th place after the race.
He’s improving on the Honda, though, and this was just another sign that things are getting better (albeit at the pace of a glacier). There’s certainly more to come from the Marini/Honda package than what we’ve already seen.
19 Augusto Fernandez
Started: 17th Sprint: 13th Finished: 16th
Describing Sunday as one of the worst races of his whole career, massive tyre drop (something that hampered more than one rider at Silverstone) left Augusto Fernandez feeling rather unhappy with his weekend, and while it might have been factors outside his control, it’s yet another one where he’s by the far the worst-performing of the KTM RC16 riders.
20 Taka Nakagami
Started: 21st Sprint: 17th Finished: 15th
Silverstone was a fairly average weekend for Nakagami.
No theatrics, nothing too exciting, no headlines, but a decent points-scoring finish capping off a weekend of near-enough test rider work done for Honda as it tries to rectify its issues.
21 Raul Fernandez
Started: 14th Sprint: 12th Finished: DNF
There was potential there this weekend for Fernandez, given what he’s shown us of late and given what the other Aprilias demonstrated, but instead of a solid start to his first weekend on GP24 machinery, he ended up taking out his team-mate and ending his squad’s race on the first lap.
Very much one to forget for him, especially after his sprint was wholly compromised by a crash up ahead.
22 Franco Morbidelli
Started: 13th Sprint: DNF Finished: 10th
It’s hard to find many positives from Morbidelli’s weekend.
His sprint ended at Turn 1- when he took out his friend Bezzecchi with an overly ambitious corner approach and completely unnecessary mistake that he refused to accept responsibility for, while in the main race he was a long way off the other three GP24 machines in first, second and third.
It looked like he had turned a corner at the Sachsenring, but Silverstone was back to square one.
