MotoGP's first race of 2025, a 13-lap sprint at Thailand Grand Prix venue Buriram, wasn't much of an on-track spectacular - but provided a welcome look at where riders and teams actually stand after the usual pre-season smoke and mirrors.
From a rider whose debut beggared belief to a manufacturer that's feeling a bit emperor's-new-clothes, here are our winners and losers from this year's inaugural contest.
Winner: Ai Ogura
We'll get to Marc Marquez. I promise.
But this was exceptional from Ai Ogura, who on Sunday has the chance to put a bow on one of the finest debut weekends in recent memory - but in any case has already made the point he needed to make.
Ogura's MotoGP promotion - more specifically Trackhouse's decision to promote him over homegrown option Joe Roberts - was contentious for some in the moment in 2024, but already then any such consternation was ridiculous. It did not take a Moto3/Moto2 expert to look at Ogura's body of work across the two championships - even before his late-season tour-de-force clinching of the Moto2 title last year - and see an elite talent.
This 'elite' though? Fourth place in your first MotoGP race 'elite'? Sole Aprilia in a top five otherwise locked out by the Ducati GP24s, the finest MotoGP bikes ever built? It's outrageous.
We have to acknowledge that the 2025-spec Aprilia appears to be a truly impressive upgrade. But... this is not the rider who's supposed to serve as 'Exhibit A'.
Incredible.
Loser: KTM
Pedro Acosta was in podium contention - and ultimately on the podium - at Buriram last year, and Brad Binder was 0.114s and a track limits violation from winning here two years ago. But KTM simply does not look like it can be on that level this weekend.
It's alarming, because this is in theory a bread-and-butter stop-and-go track for the RC16, although it is a bike that has been seemingly designed to be a bit more of an all-rounder this year.
Acosta is at least fast, and would've had a much better race with a true KTM-spec start rather than a middling one, but this is not enough. And while Binder deserves credit for turning another bad grid position into another decent race result... well... see the first part of that sentence for where the problem is, too.
The Tech3 duo are non-factors so far, and for once a slightly muted pre-season looks to have been representative of where KTM is actually at.
Winners: The Marquez brothers
The elder Marquez refused to talk the talk for much of the pre-season - shying away from the favourite tag - but here he certainly walked the walk. It wasn't crushing dominance, but of course it didn't need to be.
He will have known, anyway, after how he compared with the other year-old Ducatis last year that he's still got it, that he's going to win a bunch this year.
So the bigger boon from today will be the performance of brother Alex.
The younger Marquez did look very strong throughout testing, but with race pace the one asterisk. It's only a 13-lapper, but it held up well enough today to where Pecco Bagnaia never got a sniff of disrupting the Marquez 1-2.
Loser: Pecco Bagnaia
Third place is fine - Bagnaia hasn't been lightning-fast this weekend, but he certainly hasn't been conspicuously slow, and after yesterday's misfortunes he navigated Q1 with almost-insulting ease.
But his admission post-race that he was still feeling a major limitation in sprint spec - on corner entry, he says - is a worry.
That was supposed to be a major off-season target, after all. It's maybe too simplistic - though mathematically accurate - to say the sprints lost Bagnaia the title last year, but they sure as shooting didn't help.
And, yes, it's 25 points on Sunday and he's still certainly a Sunday rider - but you know what? So is Marc Marquez.
Winner: Joan Mir
A ninth-place finish is nothing much, and the fact that it's only Joan Mir's second-ever points-scoring finish in a sprint probably elicits more of a derisive chuckle than kudos. But hear us out.
Mir certainly didn't help himself with a crash in qualifying - but his race was sabotaged more off the line by Marco Bezzecchi's poor start near him. In circumstances like that last year you would've expected a crash notification to follow a few laps later - instead Mir gathered himself and came back through to defeat Johann Zarco for that final point and the claim of top Honda.
Zarco made him look silly at many a point last season - later in the year Luca Marini did, too - but Mir genuinely looks like he's turned the tide of that intra-Honda battle.
Losers: A pair of pre-season standouts
A crash for Jack Miller and an appalling race-ruining start for Bezzecchi (after he crashed in qualifying) do not undo their good work of the pre-season, but will sting anyway.
I wouldn't hold it too much against Miller that he chucked it down the road while matching Yamaha star Fabio Quartararo for pace and trying to consolidate a really great position - certainly it's a very Miller thing to do, but you'd rather be in his position than where Miguel Oliveira and Alex Rins are spending the weekend.
Equally, Bezzecchi can hardly be faulted for a bad start on the Aprilia, because Bad Start on the Aprilia is basically a TV show that's run for so long that they've had time to change all the cast - but Ogura stealing the limelight will rankle, given this should be Bezzecchi's time to shine.
