Another familiar top three order at the end of the first race of MotoGP’s Grand Prix of the Americas weekend at Austin, but a quite eventful route to that result leaves a few riders and teams with reasons to grimace while others smile. Here’s our pick of the stars and flops.
Winner: Alex Marquez
This second place was one of the best rides of Alex Marquez's MotoGP career, given this is a track he has really struggled to make any sort of impression at in the past.
He is both riding consistently fast and executing perfectly, two things that just weren't the case across 2020-2024.
Sunday will be another big test to pass, but so far this has been an unimpeachable campaign.
Loser: Joan Mir
Joan Mir was understandably frustrated with Honda's ongoing top speed deficiency after the sprint - it cannot be fun to be gobbled up by a KTM in the straight and then lose boatloads of laptime behind it - but while Honda needs to prove it can fix that without creating other weaknesses, he needs to prove that he can actually be relied on to finish races.
A big part of why he was fighting past KTMs and fellow Hondas and chasing after a Yamaha is that he had crashed in qualifying. And seventh in the sprint, while nothing that will transform the CV of a MotoGP world champion, is a good result thrown away - with a crash on the same Turn 15 bump as in qualifying!
Mir acknowledged it was his mistake but said he has to risk "a bit more than the others" on the front to make up for the straightline speed deficit.
Maybe so, but Honda must be wishing for him to recalibrate his risk/reward assessments.
Winner: Marc Marquez
Marc Marquez was really close to rewriting the book on this early-season championship battle when he slid at Turn 17 - especially as, by Ducati team-mate Pecco Bagnaia's admission, a crash would've meant Bagnaia clattering into Marquez.
Has Bagnaia just made a pivotal breakthrough? Watch Simon Patterson's take on Patreon in his latest exclusive paddock insight video for The Race Members Club
That this was avoided already makes him a kind of winner - and from there on he had enough control to adjust to the sprint track conditions that surprised all three of the podium finishers (seemingly a consequence of a big track temperature swing compared to qualifying).
Brother Alex acknowledged, too, that Marc probably had a couple of tenths of a second per lap in the pocket still - but even riding like that, COTA can clearly still force a mistake.
Loser: KTM
The KTM RC16 is tentatively getting itself into the 'worst bike on the grid' conversations. It probably isn't, but it looks uniquely limited in the hands of what should be MotoGP's deepest line-up.
All four complained of vibrations of varying nature after the sprint. For Maverick Vinales, it was something extraordinary - and race-ending - but for the others it sounded like the extension of the recurring KTM problem (though not theirs alone, as rival riders' answers today also made clear).
“Always more or less when I come here talking about problems, I am talking about vibrations," Pedro Acosta acknowledged after finishing seventh. "It’s already a topic every time I enter into the box.” KTM must find a solution, he said, because it's "already one year like this".
It sounds at least eminently fixable, and Acosta feels the bike is a considerable upgrade - on his end, anyway - over one lap, which suggests more potential than last year. Right now, though, all four riders are just hanging on.
Winner: Fabio Quartararo
This is why they pay him the big bucks.
This was the third sighting of 'franchise rider' Fabio Quartararo in 2025 - the first was throughout the Sepang test, the second was on Friday at Termas de Rio Honda.
But this one is more valuable than either of those, even though a baseline irritation with where the Yamaha M1 is right now clearly remains.
Quartararo had a wild race, and attributes that to the fact that the M1 is still too front-reliant, i.e. that he's not getting any help from the rear of the bike while decelerating with lean angle.
Maybe he's fourth with a perfect race, but sixth behind a Ducati 1-2-3-4-5 is a gift for a project that has stumbled out of the gate in 2025.
Winner: Ai Ogura
“I think Aprilia is strong in this circuit, but it was more from Maverick, I guess! So Aprilia riders need to wake up. Including me, of course!”
Ai Ogura sprinkled in a bit of endearing self-deprecation in his post-sprint assessment, but in truth this was another really good day, which are increasingly becoming the norm in his young MotoGP career.
A practice crash dented his confidence, but the run to ninth place in the sprint didn't show it - and while the true level of the bike remains a bit of an enigma, Ogura is showing he is a rider who can be relied on.
Loser: Marco Bezzecchi
Perhaps no rider on the MotoGP grid has had as big a vibe shift from the pre-season to now as Marco Bezzecchi - and it's not like there aren't some other strong candidates.
As referenced above, last year at COTA the Aprilia RS-GP looked like the best bike in the history of the concept of bikes in the hands of Vinales. Vinales left and Jorge Martin is injured so the buck now stops with Bezzecchi to uphold Aprilia's honour here, and so far he just hasn't produced.
Bezzecchi has put much of this down to a mechanical issue-laden first practice (which also featured a bad crash). "We are trying to solve everything but we are quite far from where we want to be with the setting," he explained.
But a single wet session being a write-off should not set fire to your entire weekend. Ogura, a rookie, arguably had a just-as-bad FP1, trundling around nine seconds off the pace, and he's recovered better.
Winner: Luca Marini
Like the KTM riders, Luca Marini pointed to "a strange vibration that disturbs us quite a bit" - which he reckons equated to three-four tenths a lap in the sprint, and is a recurring issue.
But Marini's day was considerably more positive, even if he couldn't quite pick off Acosta for seventh in the end.
Marini is in a contract year and has looked a distinct third-best of the Honda contingent behind both Mir and Johann Zarco so far on the new RC213V, but felt that something has clicked of late.
Mir surely had something more in the sprint, but, like he so often does, didn't finish. Marini did - he almost always does.
Loser: VR46
Is fourth and fifth a bad result? Not... really, no. But when Alex Marquez is hoovering up podiums for Gresini, you can't help but feel the other Ducati satellite team is underperforming - and a big part of that might be that its riders keep tripping over each other.
It was the case at Termas and again here. Franco Morbidelli was vibration-limited so ended the race "definitely not really happy", but while Fabio Di Giannantonio was in better shape he, like in Termas, came off a distinct second-best in an early battle with Morbidelli, which conditioned his entire race.
Di Giannantonio says he just needs to start better because "when you want to fight with Pecco, Alex and Marc at the moment you have to be already there, you cannot do the races coming back. It’s spectacular but it’s not helpful for the final result. So I was a bit angry about this".
So, both frustrated. And for good reason - they're putting up good points, but there's no good reason for them not to be in that mix out front.
Winner: Fermin Aldeguer
Fermin Aldeguer made a right mess of qualifying, but was completely blameless in ending up at the back of the sprint pack early on - a consequence of finding himself on the outside of a three-into-one situation caused by some aforementioned robust fighting between Morbidelli and Di Giannantonio.
He rode a really good 20th-to-11th race from there on, his best in MotoGP so far, even if it went unrewarded in terms of points.
"I think we did a big step today," he said. It still feels a bit piecemeal and with lots of session-by-session variations but, yes, progress is clearly being made.
