Jorge Martin is the 2024 MotoGP world champion but who actually did the best job in the deciding Solidarity Grand Prix weekend?
And who may as well have just skipped straight to the test day?
Simon Patterson ranks all 23 riders’ Barcelona performances from best to worst.
1 Jorge Martin
Qualified: 4th Sprint: 3rd Finished: 3rd
It’s fair to say Martin was something of a nervous wreck all weekend at Barcelona as he stood on the precipice of becoming MotoGP world champion.
And it’s credit to the way in which he has matured in the past 12 months that he never put a foot wrong when it mattered.
Happy to fight when he needed to but willing to let the battle escape him when it didn’t benefit him, he rode a tactically sound weekend to take a well-deserved crown to Aprilia with him.
2 Pecco Bagnaia
Qualified: 1st Sprint: 1st Finished: 1st
Pecco Bagnaia’s final weekend (at least for now) as the reigning MotoGP world champion is, at the very least, one that he can look back on with the sure knowledge that he left nothing on the table.
Dominating all the important sessions and essentially leading both races from start to finish, it was the only performance he could deliver if he wanted to do everything he could to stop Martin.
3 Aleix Espargaro
Qualified: 2nd Sprint: 4th Finished: 5th
Given that Aleix Espargaro has looked somewhat checked out in the past races, it wasn’t certain which version of him we would see turn up for his final MotoGP race as a full-time rider.
In the end, though, it was the old hard-scrapping Espargaro, one who was absolutely ready and willing not just to go out on a high but to very much insert himself into the title fight, something that he managed with absolute style and a masterclass in defensive riding as wingman for “little brother” Martin.
4 Alex Marquez
Qualified: 11th Sprint: 5th Finished: 4th
Yes, there are certain circuits where Alex Marquez’s performance is disproportionately higher. And yes, Barcelona is one of them.
But that takes nothing at all away from the second strong ride in as many events for the junior Gresini Racing rider, who has very much reminded the world what he’s really capable of in the final races of the year and on a bike not as good as those around him.
A weekend that bodes very well for 2025.
5 Marc Marquez
Qualified: 3rd Sprint: 7th Finished: 2nd
In any other week, Marc Marquez would feature a lot higher for sticking his year-old Ducati on the podium between two GP24s.
It was a hell of a ride on Sunday, one that no one really expected given the struggles he’d had up until that point with the bike at the Barcelona circuit, and it more than made up for a sprint race that essentially finished before it started after contact with Pedro Acosta.
A very good base for his transition to factory colours on Tuesday.
6 Enea Bastianini
Qualified: 8th Sprint: 2nd Finished: 7th
Barcelona has never been Enea Bastianini’s favourite track in the world. In fact, it’s been somewhere where he’s struggled a fair bit in the past, and as a result, his sprint podium (from eighth on the grid after a start that briefly put him first) was actually somewhat unexpected.
However, his long race performance simply wasn’t there, as evidenced by his inability to find a way past Espargaro before slowly dropping back out of contention for the podium.
A rather obscure end to his time at Ducati.
7 Franco Morbidelli
Qualified: 5th Sprint: 6th Finished: 8th
There’s really no other way that Franco Morbidelli should have finished 2024 than as the fourth of the four GP24 Ducatis and behind a GP23 or two, given that’s been the best he’s had to offer all season.
We've got used to that form, but he did at least end his final Pramac weekend with a decent set of results even if you'd always hope for more from the best bike on the grid.
8 Brad Binder
Qualified: 18th Sprint: 9th Finished: 6th
A tough weekend for KTM was always on the cards at Barcelona, and credit to Brad Binder for being the only one of its line-up to be able to get stuck into the top six - a job made even more impressive given his awful qualifying.
Enough to secure the top non-Ducati spot in the standings, it was a fitting end to his season with a championship position very much earned on decent rides rather than consistency like in previous years.
9 Marco Bezzecchi
Qualified: 9th Sprint: 8th Finished: 9th
An uneventful final weekend with the VR46 Ducati team for Marco Bezzecchi where he never really featured in the coverage as he hung around on the edge of the top 10.
Really, it's a fitting conclusion to a year where he’s never been able to gel with the combination of Ducati GP23 and Michelin’s new rear tyre design.
He’s another rider whose primary focus at Barcelona was likely on arriving to Tuesday’s test fit and ready to go as he tries his new Aprilia.
10 Pedro Acosta
Qualified: 6th Sprint: DNF Finished: 10th
As has become usual lately, there was a chance for Pedro Acosta to be higher on this list - but at least on this occasion he can say that it wasn’t his fault he didn’t finish the sprint, after opening lap contact with Marc Marquez left him riding a naked bike.
The main event was better, though, with a bit of the discretion he promised to deliver this year. He settled for a result rather than crashing trying to be a few places higher.
A decent end to the year that highlights the lessons he’s learned this season.
11 Johann Zarco
Qualified: 12th Sprint: 11th Finished: 14th
Once again Honda’s top rider on a race weekend, and that never really looked to be in doubt across the whole weekend for Johann Zarco - who’s shown consistently impressive pace for the last few months.
Able once again to walk the fine line between asking for too much and not giving enough, he’s cemented his place in the Honda ranks as the guy who’s going to deliver a better bike to the factory team sooner rather than later.
12 Fabio Quartararo
Qualified: 10th Sprint: 10th Finished: 11th
Gone are the days of Fabio Quartararo being able to fight at the sharp end of MotoGP races at Barcelona, given the state of the current Yamaha package - and in the interim while it tries to improve the bike, the best he can do right now seems to be consistent top 10 pace.
It wasn’t the worst end to his season, given that he was able to find his way into some good close pack racing and hold his own against some Ducatis, but it’s not where he wants to be.
13 Miguel Oliveira
Qualified: 14th Sprint: 18th Finished: 12th
Considering it was his first weekend on the bike in nearly two months and the first time back from an injury that’s still not quite fully recovered, Miguel Oliveira achieved essentially what we expected from him: a solid if underwhelming final ride on the Trackhouse Aprilia that gets him up to speed for his (more important) first Yamaha test with Pramac.
14 Luca Marini
Qualified: 16th Sprint: 15th Finished: 16th
Pretty much what we’ve come to expect from Luca Marini on Repsol’s final weekend as the title sponsor of the factory Honda team.
Nothing dramatic, nothing too amazing, but solid improvements on when MotoGP last raced at Barcelona and two solid finishes with other Hondas in front of him and his team-mate Joan Mir in the gravel.
15 Joan Mir
Qualified: 13th Sprint: 13th Finished: DNF
A relatively standard-issue final weekend of the season for Mir.
A decent qualifying position that he translated into a decent sprint result before crashing out of the battle for the top 10 in the main race is pretty much how the second half of the season has gone for the Honda rider, and it was no exception at his second home race of the year.
He’s done well to survive intact all year, though, and will already be looking forward to a hopefully better Honda next season.
16 Jack Miller
Qualified: 19th Sprint: 19th Finished: 13th
All season long, Jack Miller has been hit or miss on the KTM, and this weekend was no exception, with his final KTM outing very much coming as a miss.
Struggling to find much in the way of performance, he wasn’t just a long way away from rookie Acosta at the sharp end, but wasn’t close to team-mate Binder either as Binder went forwards after their mutual poor qualifying and Miller really didn’t.
That was in part due to bike spec and the older machinery he’s on, and you also get the sense that the Australian wasn’t taking much in the way of risks on his final KTM weekend either.
17 Taka Nakagami
Qualified: 20th Sprint: 17th Finished: 17th
It‘s a bit of a shame that Taka Nakagami’s MotoGP farewell didn’t quite work out the way it had looked like it might on Friday morning when he topped the first practice session at a track where he has always been historically quite strong.
However, the standard issue Honda woe of vibration problems came running back once things got underway in both races, leaving him to bow out without much in the way of fanfare.
18 Augusto Fernandez
Qualified: 21st Sprint: 20th Finished: 19th
One of many riders who won’t be on the MotoGP grid next year (at least on a full-time basis) and who was hoping for something a little more - but who was completely unable to find it.
What makes it worse is that he thought he had found it on Sunday morning - but in the end, Augusto Fernandez’s old KTM issues came back to plague him for one final time.
Roll on 2025 and a few Yamaha wildcards on a bike that should in theory work a little better for him.
19 Stefan Bradl
Qualified: 23rd Sprint: 22nd Finished: 22nd
Unfortunately, a little bit of an incongruous final MotoGP race for veteran Stefan Bradl, as his time not only as Honda’s go-to injury replacement and wildcard but also his 131-race-long MotoGP career came to an end with a weekend where, while completing his job in his usual diligent way, he barely even made it onto TV.
20 Michele Pirro
Qualified: 22nd Sprint: 21st Finished: 20th
A pretty standard issue Michele Pirro wildcard weekend except for the fact that it’s the first one of them we’ve seen this season.
He came, he rode around without much drama on Fabio Di Giannantonio’s 2023-spec VR46 Ducati, he collected valuable feedback on why the bike isn’t working quite as well with Michelin’s new-for-2024 rear tyre, and he’s in place to bed in the VR46 team’s new GP25 in Tuesday’s test.
21 Maverick Vinales
Qualified: 7th Sprint: 12th Finished: 15th
When your team-mate is fighting for the podium in both races and you’re fighting for a single point, it’s not a great look - and it’s perhaps fair to say that Maverick Vinales had enough of his time at Aprilia by the time the final round of the season kicked off.
Very much a non-entity most of the weekend, even getting bumped off track early on in the main race isn’t really enough to excuse a farewell weekend without much in the way of highlights.
22 Alex Rins
Qualified: 15th Sprint: 16th Finished: 21st
Alex Rins’ season continued to be a mystery to the end, because it’s obvious that he’s made real progress on the Yamaha M1 this season, and that the current iteration of the bike is certainly the best one that he’s ridden so far.
Yet, it never gets any easier for him across a full race distance, even in sprints.
He’s still struggling to be competitive when it matters, while his team-mate Quartararo is showing that it’s possible to drag the bike kicking and screaming into the points.
Electing to ignore a long lap penalty for shortcutting Turn 1 was the sour icing on a bad cake for him, though, with the subsequent nine-second penalty demoting him further still.
23 Raul Fernandez
Qualified: 17th Sprint: 14th Finished: 18th
Another weekend, another lacklustre performance from Raul Fernandez, whose excuses about performance go out of the window a little every time another Aprilia rider appears at the sharp end of a race weekend.
It’s been a tough year for him and made harder by switching bikes mid-season, but he should at least at this point of the year have been able to match his Barcelona results from earlier in the season.
