Winners and losers from the MotoGP Spanish GP

MotoGP’s return to Europe saw a few of the season’s early patterns get turned on their heads. Aprilia’s run of wins was finally broken, while a man who had been largely anonymous before this weekend popped up to win the race on Sunday. 

While inclement weather on Saturday provided the opportunity for new faces to surge nearer the front, certain stars found themselves out of position as they failed to master the challenge of Jerez. Meanwhile, MotoGP’s biggest name ended up with plenty to ponder….

Here’s a look at those celebrating highs and lows after the weekend in Andalucia.

Getting his breakthrough grand prix win on home ground at last year’s Spanish GP was a dream come true, but it wasn’t entirely unexpected. Repeating the feat would not even have crossed Alex’s mind this time around. His form had been mediocre in the three flyaways that opened the season; his odds were long. His laughing dismissal of his chances in Thursday’s press conference was probably genuine. 

As soon as he hit the track on Friday, though, it looked like the 2025 edition of Alex Marquez – the one who finished second in the world championship – was back. Suddenly, he was leader of the Ducati pack in dry conditions. Not even his illustrious brother had an answer.

Alex didn’t handle the damp weather on Saturday quite so well, crashing in both qualifying and the sprint. But this quirky day of guesswork wasn’t one to over-analyse… and the conditions robbed others of the chance to cut his edge in dry-track performance. He duly took advantage of that on Sunday, waltzing to victory despite starting from the second row.

Whether this proves a blip remains to be seen. But either way, Alex will be pleading with Liberty Media not to axe any Spanish races. He’s won three of the last five in his homeland, so watch out for him in Barcelona next month!

Francesco Bagnaia, Ducati Team

Photo by: Ducati Corse

Last year’s Japanese GP must seem a lifetime ago for the Ducati crew in red. That day, they were celebrating a race win for Francesco Bagnaia and a world title for Marc Marquez. They could never have imagined that they wouldn’t crack a podium for the next nine races – and counting.   

The factory team simply isn’t getting it together at the moment, and Jerez provided probably the most embarrassing example of that since that day at Motegi. A satellite Ducati won the race, after all, while another completed the podium. All things considered, Gresini and VR46 seemed to be ticking along pretty well while Davide Tardozzi’s crew contemplated a general lack of pace and a double DNF.

The factory squad has had plenty of practice dealing with an unfit or absent Marc Marquez since Japan. Ditto a Bagnaia battling his own perplexing form. But here, at a Ducati stronghold, Marquez had declared himself fully fit and Bagnaia was coming off an American weekend that had provided some positives. So for the wheels to come off so dramatically at Jerez, while the independents flew the flag, would have stung. 

Yes, Marc did take a damp-weather pole and led a 1-2 the sprint, although there was a fair bit of luck involved in that victory. But the factory Ducati crew doesn’t go racing to pocket sprints.

Sunday was truly worrying, with Marc’s high-speed crash – his second in as many race weekends – confirming that the lead rider is in a funk to match that of the team. Making the right tyre call in the sprint aside, Bagnaia was back to anonymous form – and the technical failure that ended his Sunday was the cherry on top of a dire weekend for the factory. 

Johann Zarco, Team LCR Honda

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Things had gone very quiet for Zarco since the highs of Le Mans and Silverstone last season. So this was a fine time for the Frenchman to remind the MotoGP world that he’s still got something to offer. And thanks to the rain on Saturday, that’s exactly what he did at Jerez.

The LCR Honda rider was, as usual, condemned to Q1 after dry Friday practice. But damp conditions for qualifying had any MotoGP gambler putting down big money on the veteran wet-weather specialist to progress to Q2. He didn’t disappoint them. A few minutes after topping Q1, he was the only man to take the fight to Marc Marquez in the pole battle, eventually qualifying a stellar second. 

Despite rain arriving in the sprint, that race was a lottery that didn’t fall his way. Many would have expected him to tumble down the field in Sunday’s sunshine, but Zarco showed that the Honda could race respectably given a decent grid slot. He ran fifth for most of the race, making the Trackhouse Aprilias work hard to pass him in the closing stages.

Seventh was a good result, especially on a day when the next Honda straggled home in 13th spot. If Zarco can just work out how to qualify like that in the dry, he can start to turn heads on a more regular basis.

Pedro Acosta, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Acosta had a stinker of a Spanish Grand Prix weekend in 2025. One year on, it was more of the same for the KTM rider. Once again, he found himself in the unusual position of not being the leading man on an orange Austrian bike. 

Out of sorts on Friday, Acosta missed out on direct passage to Q2 for the first time this season. That he ended up more or less where he usually lines up on the grid, sixth, had everything to do with the rain coming down on Saturday morning. It’s doubtful whether either he or Zarco would have made it through Q1 had the circuit been dry. 

In the sprint, Acosta joined many others in falling whilst on the wrong tyres at the wrong time. Then, with the sun out on Sunday, Acosta delivered the dry-track mediocrity Friday had promised. He sank quickly down the field, not helped by a few aero bits parting company with the bike when he whacked Raul Fernandez early in the race. Finishing 10th was probably a decent result under the circumstances.

Enea Bastianini, Red Bull KTM Tech 3

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

In 2025, it was Maverick Vinales who stole Acosta’s KTM leadership role at Jerez. This time, with Vinales injured and absent, the way was clear for his Tech3 team-mate Enea Bastianini to stand up for the Mattighofen manufacturer in Spain. Now 28, it’s high time for him to embrace that kind of casting too. 

The Italian was the last to sneak straight into Q2 in a tightly contested Practice on Friday, then backed that up with eighth-fastest time in qualifying despite very different conditions. He landed up 11th in the half-wet sprint, but at least kept the bike upright while slithering around on the wrong rubber. Finishing eighth on Sunday may not have been spectacular but he was eight seconds clear of the next KTM.

The encouraging thing for Bastianini, who has had a rough time at Tech3 since moving there for 2025, is that this result didn’t come in isolation. It came on the back of a positive outing in the USA, where he also made Q2 directly and then finished sixth. As riders like him begin to jockey hard to secure satellite spots in 2027, he’ll know that he needs to keep up the good work. 

Winner: Raul Fernandez

Raul Fernandez, Trackhouse Racing

Photo by: Gold and Goose Photography / LAT Images / via Getty Images

Such is Fernandez’s level of consistency, it feels like featuring him as a ‘winner’ here guarantees he’ll go down as a ‘loser’ next time out at Le Mans. But who knows, maybe this positive weekend will finally get a streak going for the 25-year-old?

After making the podium at the season-opener in Thailand, the Trackhouse man had gone comparatively AWOL in Brazil and America. So it was high time for Fernandez to rejoin the other Aprilias at the sharp end of the pack. Racing on home ground, he accomplished that urgent mission at Jerez. 

Seventh in Practice, he made it into Q2 with no trouble at all, then was ninth-fastest in qualifying. He was another to come out on the wrong side of the sprint shower, but raced well on Sunday. He will have learned a lot from getting stuck behind Zarco for so many laps, however. This arguably cost him at the end, when team-mate Ai Ogura, on a late charge as usual, snatched his fifth place on the last lap.

Fernandez is the only regular rider yet to fall in any MotoGP race or session this season. Whether that’s just a fun fact or tells us something about his ups and downs is open to debate.

We want your opinion!

– The Motorsport.com Team

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: motorsport.com