The Malaysian Grand Prix weekend didn’t quite settle the 2024 MotoGP world championship battle, but it came pretty close to doing so.
Where do the title protagonists fit into his best-to-worst ranking of every rider’s Sepang performance, and who else impressed or disappointed?
1 Jorge Martin
Qualified: 2nd Sprint: 1st Finished: 2nd
The Malaysian Grand Prix might not quite have been the weekend where Jorge Martin won the title mathematically, but when we look back on the season we’ll surely conclude it was the one where he dealt the decisive blow to Pecco Bagnaia’s hopes.
Superb in the sprint, as we’ve come to expect from him, both his willingness to lay it all on the line early on in Sunday’s main event but to then also pivot into taking the safe points in second displays the measure of the man he’s grown up into over the past 12 months, and it’s that maturity that has ensured 2024 is now unlikely to end the way 2023 did.
2 Alex Marquez
Qualified: 3rd Sprint: 4th Finished: 4th
Given that he didn’t step on the podium once at Sepang, it might be a surprise to see Alex Marquez featuring so highly in the rankings - but honestly, through process of elimination, it’s hard to suggest that anyone else but Martin had a better weekend.
Absolutely the best of the rest behind the factory-spec bikes and his brother (and well clear of Franco Morbidelli’s GP24), he didn’t put a foot wrong the way that Marc and Bagnaia did, nor did he fail to deliver on expectations like Enea Bastianini.
All in all, a very solid weekend for the Gresini rider, and one in which he was unlucky to not be rewarded with a trophy to take home.
3 Enea Bastianini
Qualified: 6th Sprint: 3rd Finished: 3rd
A really consistent event for Bastianini despite him not quite feeling up to speed all weekend.
Missing something from his front end feeling on the factory Ducati, he could have very easily ended up in the Sepang gravel rather than twice on the podium.
He might not have had the pace he expected, and he might be heading back to Europe disappointed - but plenty of others would have been more than happy to take his results, including even Marc Marquez as the pair continue to battle for third in the championship.
4 Fabio Quartararo
Qualified: 8th Sprint: 5th Finished: 6th
Once again delivering performances that he really has no business doing on the current Yamaha, Fabio Quartararo’s Sunday effort was made all the more impressive by coming mere minutes after a terrifying crash that forced him to race his spare bike with a tired and slow engine, and with tyres that he’d already rejected as not feeling quite right earlier in the weekend.
An important reminder of his talent even as things start to look good (if not quite great) again for the 2021 world champion and his employer.
5 Pecco Bagnaia
Qualified: 1st Sprint: DNF Finished: 1st
Obviously, the only thing keeping Bagnaia from a top-three spot in this list is the glaring error that came on Saturday: his unforced crash out of second place in the sprint that was most likely the death knell for his title defence.
Things falling apart in the sprint was maybe not too much of a surprise given how weak he’s been compared to Martin in the shorter races all season, and even his dominant win after putting his title rival in his place in the opening laps on Sunday wasn’t enough to counteract the magnitude of his error 24 hours before.
6 Pedro Acosta
Qualified: 13th Sprint: 9th Finished: 5th
You’ve got to give Pedro Acosta credit where it’s due: after a spate of crashes out of podium fights in recent rounds, he finally conceded last weekend that he needed to be more prepared to settle for top five results instead.
And, ever the quick learner, that’s exactly what he did at Sepang, taking home a decent result in the main event after being unable to get the better of his fellow KTMs in the sprint, and wrestling back control of the top non-Ducati spot in the championship standings from 2025 team-mate Brad Binder in the process.
7 Marc Marquez
Qualified: 5th Sprint: 2nd Finished: DNF
Plenty of performance all weekend from Marc Marquez even as he continues to fight against 2024-spec Ducati machinery on a year-old bike that was at a visible disadvantage on the long straights of Sepang.
Crashes gave and they took away, with Bagnaia’s fall on Saturday promoting him into an unexpected second before his own downfall from third on Sunday.
But the reassuring message from the weekend as a whole should be that Marquez has still very much got the pace to be a frontrunner in 2025 on better machinery.
8 Alex Rins
Qualified: 9th Sprint: 11th Finished: 8th
Believe it or not, Alex Rins was disappointed with his best-ever Yamaha performance on Sunday, but if anything that’s a sign that there’s still plenty more to come from the project.
Finally starting to find his way with the bike now, the Yamaha experience gap means he’s still a few steps behind team-mate Quartararo, but with the pair delivering a very strong second half of the season and with plenty of exciting developments in the pipeline for them, Rins is now very much justifying the team’s decision to put its faith in him.
9 Maverick Vinales
Qualified: 12th Sprint: 14th Finished: 7th
The Maverick Vinales mystery continues, with good and bad results for the Aprilia rider seemingly coming at random and with grand prix outcomes bearing very little relation to his qualifying performance or where he finished the sprint!
It wasn’t an easy weekend for Aprilia amid its recurring temperature woes, and Saturday’s sprint slump was a result of those problems for Vinales - which makes his sudden return to much better form in the main race even more of a mystery!
10 Johann Zarco Qualified: 11th Sprint: DNF Finished: 11th
Another decent weekend where Johann Zarco once again ended up in the well-deserved spot of top Honda, as he continues to walk the fine line between asking for too much and not giving enough to the RC213V.
It might not be paying off in terms of overall results just yet, but it’s building a foundation that will take Honda into 2025 in a much better way than it started this season.
11 Franco Morbidelli
Qualified: 4th Sprint: 6th Finished: 14th
Franco Morbidelli should have been much higher in both the rankings and in the results, but his Sunday crash was a completely unforced error, the sort that he simply shouldn’t still be making on a GP24.
Yes, others also failed to see the chequered flag on the same machinery this weekend, but with Morbidelli there always seems to be something missing from his overall weekend that’s preventing him from really utilising the potential of the best bike on the grid the way that everyone else who has it can.
12 Augusto Fernandez
Qualified: 21st Sprint: 13th Finished: 10th
Since starting to work with new crew chief Alberto Giribuola before the flyaways, Augusto Fernandez has promised potential on numerous occasions but has never quite been able to deliver on it due to issues both of his making and of KTM’s.
However, it finally all came together for him at Sepang and, true to his word, the top 10 pace he’s been adamant he has somewhere inside him could shine through.
It's a high note as his full-time MotoGP career nears its end (for now), and hopefully one he can match at home at Barcelona next time out.
13 Andrea Iannone
Qualified: 17th Sprint: 19th Finished: 17th
Given that Andrea Iannone hadn’t sat on a MotoGP bike in five years, expectations coming into this weekend’s return to the premier class were low.
So, to come home not a million miles away from having scored points and not at all that far away from VR46 team-mate Marco Bezzecchi at one of the more physically demanding circuits on the calendar isn’t a bad performance at all.
Hopefully, it means that he’ll get a second MotoGP chance at the Barcelona finale, a circuit he’s raced at this year in World Superbikes and which should be a little easier for him than Sepang.
14 Marco Bezzecchi
Qualified: 14th Sprint: 10th Finished: 9th
A rather uneventful weekend for Bezzecchi that didn’t deliver much in terms of results.
What makes it considerably worse for him, though, is the comparison to both the Gresini duo and even to temporary team-mate Iannone, who was only 0.3 seconds off in qualifying (though very much aided by a tow from Bezzecchi).
You get a sense that it’s a case of the sooner Bezzecchi can escape this tough season and see what’s possible on an Aprilia, the better.
15 Jack Miller
Qualified: 7th Sprint: 8th Finished: DNS
We don’t have a Sunday race to judge Jack Miller’s weekend on, but at least the Australian was able to walk away from one of the season’s most terrifying crashes on the opening lap.
However, it had been a pretty good weekend up until that point, with a good qualifying and solid sprint performance on a circuit that was obviously lending something a little bit extra to the KTM package.
You have to feel a little disappointed for Miller knowing that he was likely denied a good chance for a decent farewell to KTM.
16 Luca Marini
Qualified: 19th Sprint: 15th Finished: 15th
A decent weekend for Luca Marini as he continues his steady progress towards getting the Honda to work for him.
It hasn’t been easy, as expected, but to his credit he’s still approaching it with his usual cheeriness, and at least having a point to show from his weekend (something that was painfully rare early in the season) is continuing to reward his commitment to the cause this year.
17 Aleix Espargaro
Qualified: 16th Sprint: 12th Finished: 13th
Aprilia’s old foe of high temperature and poor heat dissipation came back to once again bite Aleix Espargaro on Sunday, leaving him with blistered hands and a struggle just to make it to the end of the race.
However, it was really a poor qualifying after yet another bike failure that set back his whole weekend and left him well off the pace.
18 Brad Binder
Started: 10th Sprint: 7th Finished: DNS
Another rider without a Sunday race to judge their whole weekend on, but unfortunately the reason that Binder didn’t get to restart after the red flag was ultimately his contact with Alex Marquez that triggered the huge Turn 1 smash.
Up until that point, he’d been having a fairly average weekend at a circuit that seemed to give KTM a bit of a boost it’s been missing lately.
19 Lorenzo Savadori
Qualified: 22nd Sprint: 20th Finished: 18th
A fairly standard-issue weekend for Aprilia’s test rider, even if Lorenzo Savadori was officially still on replacement duties for Miguel Oliveira at satellite team Trackhouse.
Spending more of his weekend trying out new 2025 parts than he did working on his own race pace, it’s a case of making sacrifices for the greater good for the fourth weekend in a row before returning to his day job again for the winter testing programme.
20 Joan Mir
Qualified: 20th Sprint: 16th Finished: DNF
It’s still not easy being Joan Mir, as he once again demonstrated at Sepang by doing what’s almost become a tradition and crashing out on Sunday.
The crashes are still coming from the same root cause: pushing harder than the bike allows.
The plus is that he’s still motivated enough to keep giving his all. That might be too much, mind you, and he’s one of the riders for whom the winter break simply cannot come soon enough now.
21 Taka Nakagami
Qualified: 18th Sprint: 17th Finished: DNF
A tough weekend for Taka Nakagami. He was completely stymied by vibration issues that meant he wasn’t even able to see the chequered flag on Sunday and was forced to retire.
The vibration problem is partly why Honda brought the new frames that everyone but Nakagami had. But it’s still disappointing to see someone pulling in from their penultimate race as a full-time MotoGP rider without a more pressing technical issue.
22 Raul Fernandez
Qualified: 15th Sprint: 18th Finished: 16th
Yes, it was a tough weekend for Aprilia all round, but it was even worse for Raul Fernandez.
Though still very much using the end of the season on the 2024 bike he only inherited at the halfway point of the season to prepare for next year, that’s still not really a good enough excuse for rather average performances throughout the flyaway races.
He was expected by now to occasionally be challenging the factory duo - and that simply hasn’t happened.
