Awful Aprilia fortunes highlighted by Qatar MotoGP Rider Ratings

Another dominant Marc Marquez race looks quite uninteresting on the surface, but the stories emerge further down the order in the 2025 Qatar MotoGP.

Marc Marquez - 9.5

Pole, Sprint win, Grand Prix win, championship lead regained. But he didn’t lead every lap, admittedly because he was managing the front tyre, which will cost him half-a-mark here. We’re sure the championship leader is devastated at that.

Francesco Bagnaia - 7.5

Francesco Bagnaia’s weekend was essentially over in qualifying when he crashed at turn four. It’s the kind of critical mistake that is strangely commonplace for Bagnaia, as is his dire Sprint speed, but the Italian recovered well in the race – even if he was beaten, on the road at least, by a KTM.

Franco Morbidelli - 8

The last time Franco Morbidelli was on the podium in Qatar he was seven months away from being a Moto2 World Champion.

It’s rarely been a strong track for the Italian, so even though he clearly cooked his tyre to lead the opening 10 laps on Sunday, managing said cooked tyre in the second half of the race to benefit from Vinales’ tyre pressure penalty and take a bronze trophy home – his second of the year – was appreciable.

Johann Zarco - 9

Yet another race and yet another factory-team-beating performance from Johann Zarco. By now there is no question that he is the best Honda rider, and it’s making this year feel a little bit like an exaggerated version of his Tech3 Yamaha days – with added consistency.

He was barely noticeable in the race because the Honda’s lack of power meant that passing was difficult, but he held the pace of the front group for the most part, and was faster than Bagnaia in the last four or five laps. Severely impressive.

Fermin Aldeguer - 9

After the opening two rounds, where he struggled compared to not only the other Ducati riders but also fellow rookie Ai Ogura on the Aprilia, Fermin Aldeguer was much better at the Grand Prix of the Americas.

But COTA is a weird track, and so repeating the impressive pace of the Austin race last weekend in Qatar – and avoiding the race-ending crash – was a positive confirmation for the young Spaniard, who now seems to be at the level that many people expected him to start the season at.

Certainly, finishing within a second of what turned out to be the podium in his fourth ride is something to be encouraged by; and the Sprint was great from him, too, finishing fourth thanks to a late mistake from Fabio Quartararo but also right behind third-placed Morbidelli.

If you wanted to be very critical, you could say that he got beat by a Honda while riding a Ducati at Qatar, but that does still feel incredibly harsh.

Alex Marquez - 6

If you were viewing Alex Marquez as a legitimate title contender coming into the weekend (a valid standard to hold a championship leader to), then Alex Marquez’s Qatar Grand Prix was a pure disaster.

Losing the championship lead on Saturday having been unable to match the pace of his main title rival, then making a mistake while trying to pass Fabio Di Giannantonio and costing himself both a long lap penalty and a loss of downforce in the process in the Grand Prix were not the acts of a champion-in-waiting.

On the other hand, if you look at Alex Marquez as a satellite rider on a year-old bike who was gifted the championship lead by the mistake of the aforementioned ‘main title rival’ at the previous race.

Sixth place is clearly below Alex Marquez’s level, and these kind of messy races are to be expected from most riders every now and then. Perhaps it’s just unfortunate that, for the Gresini Ducati rider, the messy race came two weeks after he became the championship leader for the first time.

All-in-all it was a fine weekend for him, because he continued to be among the fastest riders and probably had the pace to be second or third without the incident with Di Giannantonio. But that incident was quite a bad misjudgement in quite a fast corner, and not the first time that Marquez has had contact with another rider in the past six or seven months

Fabio Quartararo - 8

As underwhelming as Sunday’s Grand Prix was for Fabio Quartararo, who was six seconds behind Honda’s Johann Zarco at the end of the race, the rest of the weekend was exceptional.

Third in qualifying for his first front row since 2022, and in the battle for the Sprint podium until the end, when he was so worried about the run to the finish line out of the final corner that he lost the front on entry and lost fourth place to the aforementioned Aldeguer.

To find something negative, you have to look at the track, and specifically the track surface, which we know is very grippy, which in turn we know is good for Yamaha.

Pedro Acosta - 6

Marc Marquez spoke after the race in Qatar of his “surprise” that it was Maverick Vinales challenging him on the KTM, and not Pedro Acosta.

That Vinales was able to stay in the 1:52s until the penultimate lap, while Acosta – who finished 14 seconds off the win in eighth – didn’t do a single 1:52 all race appears to be rather telling of Acosta’s weekend.

On the positive side for the second-year Spaniard, he was much better than Enea Bastianini and Brad Binder, and he beat Vinales in the Sprint when the #12 ran out of grip.

But still not a great weekend for Acosta, who is yet to really establish himself as the reference for the Austrian brand this year.

Marco Bezzecchi - 6.5

It was not a good weekend for Aprilia in Qatar, but Marco Bezzecchi at least seemed to make progress through the weekend. Having missed Q2 in Practice and in Q1, he was able to race to the top-10 in both races and was the best Aprilia rider.

But it was a long way off – 14.368 seconds separated the leading RS-GP from victory on Sunday.

Luca Marini - 7

He was soundly beaten by Johann Zarco in all the sessions that mattered, but Luca Marini nonetheless grabbed his second top-10 in as many races on the Honda.

The Italian continues to be very solid, if not very flashy or exciting at all.

Enea Bastianini - 6.5

11th for the 2022 Qatar Grand Prix winner, and so far behind his teammate that even a 16-second penalty for Vinales only left him less than 0.4 seconds behind him, is not going to make the 2025 edition of the Doha race one to remember for Enea Bastianini. But he did beat Brad Binder, who was second at Qatar last year on the KTM.

Alex Rins - 6

12th place for Alex Rins and just under five seconds behind his teammate, Quartararo, but without the Frenchman’s time attack flash. Although, he did make it to Q2 via Q1, beating Aprilia’s Marco Bezzecchi, which was quite impressive.

Brad Binder - 4

On the results sheet, Brad Binder finished 0.168 seconds ahead of Maverick Vinales, which means he actually finished almost 16 seconds behind him. Last year he was second, so it’s quite a dramatic fall off for the South African, who destroyed his rear tyre trying to compensate for front end push.

Maverick Vinales - 9

Rare to give a guy a 9 for finishing 14th but he’s the only rider to have had anything like Marc Marquez’s late race pace in any race this year, more or less, and he did it on a KTM.

He was illegal on front tyre pressure, but he was still better than five of the six Ducati riders out there, and so far clear of Bastianini and Binder that he almost beat them even with the penalty.

A deeply impressive weekend from Maverick Vinales, even if he had the standard KTM tyre wear at the end of the Sprint, and even if it does feel like the kind of stand-out performance that Vinales is capable of producing once or twice a season, just as he did last year in Austin.

Ai Ogura - 6.5

Points for Ai Ogura, who was 15th, in Qatar, but this was his worst race of the season. There was promise in qualifying, when he topped Q1 by almost half-a-second, but Ogura failed to deliver on that in the race, as he fell back gradually as the race wore on following a decent start.

As Aldeguer has improved in the past two weeks, Ogura has gotten further away, it seems. Perhaps Trackhouse need to bring back the Gulf livery.

Fabio Di Giannantonio - 5

It’s quite hard to judge Fabio Di Giannantonio’s race since it was ruined quite early on by Alex Marquez, but his speed was more or less comparable with the rest of the Ducati riders – bar Marc Marquez – all weekend, so fine enough.

The contact with Joan Mir at turn six was extremely clumsy, though.

Disappointing end result, though.

Raul Fernandez - 2

The pressure has been increasing on Raul Fernandez in recent weeks and scoring no points in Qatar is unlikely to have eased that at all. Indeed, finishing behind Di Giannantonio, and eight seconds behind his teammate, Ogura, on the Japanese rider’s worst race of the year was not the impression the Spanish rider would’ve liked to make in Lusail.

Somkiat Chantra - 3

The first races of the season were encouraging for Somkiat Chantra as he was able to be competitive with some other riders. That was not the case in Qatar, as he finished last, 38 seconds off the win, and 12 seconds behind second-last Fernandez.

Jorge Martin - 5

There were flashes of speed at times from Jorge Martin, which is hardly a shock despite his still-compromised physical condition entering the weekend, and he even looked like he might out-qualify his teammate, Bezzecchi, for a while in Q1.

But his lack of fitness paid eventually, and ending the race with a pneumothorax and six broken ribs means he’ll probably be out for even more races – quite literally the last thing he and Aprilia needed.

Augusto Fernandez - 6

Nothing special from Augusto Fernandez in Qatar, but he’s there to fill a gap not challenge Quartararo. He was at a similar speed to Jack Miller for most of the weekend, qualifying a couple of tenths slower and finishing just over two seconds ahead of him in the Sprint.

The crash in the Grand Prix was not ideal, but not the end of the world, either – he was running 19th at the time.

Joan Mir - 4

Gastroenteritis plagued Joan Mir all weekend, and it was not a great one for the 2020 World Champion: he qualified second-last, didn’t race the Sprint, and retired from the Grand Prix after the aforementioned contact with Di Giannantonio.

All-in-all a poor weekend for Mir, but with his physical issues over the weekend it’s perhaps hard to be too critical.

Jack Miller - 2

Having been the best Yamaha at times this season, qualifying 16th, finishing 19th and behind his stand-in teammate in the Sprint, and crashing out of the Grand Prix was a quite disastrous weekend for Jack Miller.