KTM rider’s Toprak Razgatlioglu-esque excellence shown in Portugal MotoGP rider ratings

After one of the best Sprints of the season, Marco Bezzecchi made the 2025 Portuguese MotoGP a total snoozer, but behind him there were performances good and bad to be marvelled and scoffed at in almost equal measure.

Marco Bezzecchi - 9

An excellent performance from Marco Bezzecchi finally gets him the win he should’ve had a month ago.

The Indonesia catastrophe cost him two race wins, and then Malaysia was pretty rubbish. So, to come back and win in Portimao is strong for Bezzecchi, who would’ve been regretting that lap one move in Mandalika all winter if he didn’t get at least one more win this season.

It was also a win that proved again Aprilia's ability to improve through a weekend. It was able to do it often in the races after the summer break, but was definitively unable to do so in Malaysia. Portimao, though, stamped Sepang as the anomaly, rather than the norm.

Alex Marquez - 8

On Friday, Alex Marquez was clear of the field. He had rivals, but the races were there for him to win.

A mistake in Q2 could’ve been costly, but good starts kept him in victory contention in both races.

On Saturday, he converted this expertly with a commanding ride to win his second Sprint of the season.

But on Sunday he was beaten by Bezzecchi and comfortably so. It wasn’t that Marquez was any worse, but Bezzecchi had gotten better. 

Marquez’s stagnation over the weekend can reasonably be put down to his year-old machinery compared to the factory bikes he’s trying to beat, but it’s hard to not feel like this was a race he could’ve won if he’d been able to improve from the solid base he found on Friday.

It was certainly not a bad weekend, and that it’s possible to be critical of Alex Marquez for finishing second is proof of the step he has made in 2025.

Pedro Acosta - 8.5

The narrative around Pedro Acosta at the moment is, understandably, about his inability to win, or KTM’s inability to provide him with a bike with which he can win.

It’s clearly frustrating for the Spanish rider to keep leaving MotoGP weekends behind without that elusive race win over either half or full distance, but the Portuguese round provided some of the clearest evidence of the excellent standard he is setting at the moment.

The difference in performance between his KTM RC16 and the Ducati Desmosedici GP24 of Alex Marquez, or the Aprilia RS-GP of Marco Bezzecchi, is not as visual as that between Toprak Razgatlioglu’s Yamaha R1 and Alvaro Bautista’s Ducati Panigale V4 R in the 2023 WorldSBK round at Portimao; but watching Acosta desperately invent overtakes at turns three and five in the Sprint and battle back towards Marquez at the end of the 12 laps after he’d seemingly already been broken sparked memories of Razgatlioglu’s remarkable battle with, and defense against, Bautista two years ago in Portimao.

Razgatlioglu had long since committed to BMW in search of horsepower in 2023 when he was battling Bautista with Yamaha, but Acosta’s situation is different. He will remain in orange next year, but there is continually increasing belief, it seems, that the Mattighofen marque is moving closer to providing the 21-year-old with a technical package that he could take to the top step of the premier class podium.

Fermin Aldeguer - 8

The stealth with which Fermin Aldeguer arrived in fourth place in the Portuguese Grand Prix could get him behind enemy lines completely undetected. 

He was hardly noticeable all weekend, but some great battling at the end of the Sprint got him two positions on the final lap, and fourth in the main race made him best of the rest behind the trio that dominated the Portugal weekend. 

Perhaps he was fortunate to avoid a sanction for the move he put on Brad Binder on Sunday, considering he was never really alongside the South African on the run into turn five, but it would’ve been unnecessarily harsh.

Considering he qualified only 11th, it was a very strong Sunday from Aldeguer, who is becoming almost a guarantee for a top-six finish regardless of his qualifying at the end of his rookie season.

Brad Binder - 7.5

He still got relatively whacked by his teammate, but this was Brad Binder’s best grand prix of the season.

It’s not been the 2025 Binder would have wanted, but if he can get himself in the top-five-or-six again in Valencia it will be a positive way for the South African to go into a 2026 season where he will have to contend for a MotoGP contract for, really, the first time since he entered the premier class half-a-decade ago.

Fabio Quartararo - 9

A front row, top-four in the Sprint, and a solid sixth in the grand prix was an excellent performance from Fabio Quartararo, who again showed the level above his fellow Yamaha riders at which he is operating this year.

Ai Ogura - 8

A bit like Aldeguer, Ai Ogura was fairly stealthy in his run to seventh to conclude the Portuguese GP weekend. 

Sure, his direct Q2 qualification from Practice stood out, but then he was only 12th when it came to qualifying; then, 11th in the Sprint was fine but not spectacular.

In the race, though, he was very good, especially in the second half of the race when he was able to attack Johann Zarco for seventh – a place that marks Ogura’s best result since he was sixth in the Catalan Grand Prix.

Fabio Di Giannantonio - 4

It was a fairly mediocre weekend from Fabio Di Giannantonio on the results sheet. Seventh in Practice, ninth in qualifying, fifth in the Sprint and six seconds off the win, and only eighth in the long race. 

But a look at the lap chart shows he dropped to 14th on the first lap of the grand prix, so the eighth he got in the end was the result of a decent fight back.

Why was he 14th on lap one? He got completely boxed in at the start. It wasn’t a terrible launch, but he was passed by Aldeguer, then three bikes passed him around the outside. Ogura then did him around the outside of turn three and inside of turn four, which cost him places on the run to turn five.

From there it was a decent ride from Di Giannantonio, but he lost so much ground at the start that it made little impact.

Johann Zarco - 6.5

The races weren’t very good for Johann Zarco but that he was the best Honda is perhaps indicative of this being not a great circuit for the RC213V, although you have to take into account Joan Mir’s double-DNF with that.

Over one lap, things were pretty good, and Zarco made the most of that, but in the races he had little to fight with or to try to move forwards.

Pol Espargaro - 7

For a fill-in to be able to consistently challenge for top-10 positions in MotoGP is quite remarkable, and that’s what Pol Espargaro continues to do. There are crashes, but the speed is really impressive from the Catalan. Another top-10 for him in Portugal.

Luca Marini - 5

For the first time in a while this was simply not a good weekend for Luca Marini. He didn’t have the speed to get through to Q2 on Friday, or on Saturday, and in the races he was unable to really move forwards. 

It seems that low-grip tracks continue to be a weakness for the Italian on the Honda, but Valencia offers one more chance to put a full weekend together in 2025.

Jack Miller - 4

Yamaha struggled all weekend and only Fabio Quartararo was able to do much of anything with the YZR-M1 - not a new story.

But perhaps Jack Miller deserves credit for being the best of the non-Quartararo Yamahas? On the other hand, 11 seconds between himself and the Frenchman is pretty stark.

Alex Rins - 4

The only rider to go with the medium-compound front tyre in the Sunday race, Alex Rins at least took a gamble to try to find some more performance. In Indonesia, a similar gamble got him temporarily in the podium battle when he took a swing at the soft-compound rear tyre, but in Portimao the softer front tyre compared to everyone else made little impact and he took a fairly average 13th-place finish.

Miguel Oliveira - 4

Three Yamahas in a row really does kind of point towards where they are. 14th was probably not how Miguel Oliveira dreamed of his final Portuguese Grand Prix (for now, as a full-time rider, all the other caveats) going, but it’s what he got. Not exceptional but can we really expect anything more at this stage?

Nicolo Bulega - 7

There are two ways to look at Nicolo Bulega’s debut MotoGP weekend.

On one side, you can say that he crashed needlessly in the Sprint on only the third lap, costing himself valuable experience; that he made a mistake in qualifying that cost him at least positions on the grid, if not a spot in Q2; and that he finished only 15th in the grand prix on the factory Ducati that Marc Marquez dominated the season with.

Flip the coin, though, and Bulega showed good speed on Friday to be almost within a second of the best time; was competitive in qualifying before he made a mistake on a tricky part of the track (turn 11) on a bike he is still largely unfamiliar with; and finished only 32 seconds off the win in his first MotoGP race having ridden the bike only in damp conditions for a reported 30-or-so laps in Jerez before this weekend.

Perhaps it’s the Superbike fan in me that wants to lean towards the latter, but Bulega’s weekend can certainly be deemed positive and successful, even if it wasn’t extraordinarily jaw-dropping or miraculous. 

Lorenzo Savadori - 6

Nothing amazing from Lorenzo Savadori this weekend but another weekend where he didn’t crash while replacing Jorge Martin and probably had a hand in Marco Bezzecchi’s improvement from Saturday to Sunday.

Somkiat Chantra - 2

Two races left for Somkiat Chantra and at least he will leave MotoGP with a highlight reel moment after that ridiculous wheelie over the crest on the start straight on Friday.

Enea Bastianini - 3

Another anonymous weekend for Enea Bastianini. Some bad luck at the start of the race on Sunday saw him pit at the end of the first lap and when he rejoined he had some decent speed. 

But it counted for nothing and the only reason he was in position to take the damage he got on the first lap was because his qualifying was, as usual, poor. 

His Sprint was pretty rubbish as well, finishing 13th.

Francesco Bagnaia - 4

Another weekend, another lot of zero points to add to Francesco Bagnaia’s tally for the season. It seems highly likely he’ll finish fifth in the standings with Pedro Acosta now only three points behind.

But there is reason to be actually almost positive about this weekend for Bagnaia, who said he was pushing when crashed, which surely means he felt good enough to be able to push. 

Also, he was a fairly comfortable fourth when he crashed, which beats the 13th he was in when he fell in Australia, or the last place he occupied when he dropped it in Mandalika.

It’s not good for Bagnaia, still, but maybe he is heading in a direction that might not be absolutely awful.

Joan Mir - 2

A terrible weekend for Joan Mir. You could probably give him a seven for his riding, but the results were woeful. Beaten by Zarco in qualifying was one thing, but the double-DNF – clearly not his fault – means a really bad Portuguese GP for the 2020 Champion.

If this were 2024 and Mir’s results didn’t matter because the bike was rubbish, the speed he showed would get him a much higher mark, but the reality is that by now the Honda is capable of being in the top-six every weekend and so the results are starting to be meaningful.

Not really his fault, but a bad weekend for Mir.

Franco Morbidelli - 2

15th in the Sprint, DNF in the GP, and largely thanks to a seemingly ridiculous swing to the inside in braking for turn five on the opening lap. That was never going to end well.

It comes after a mass of incidents for Morbidelli this year, including one in qualifying with Miguel Oliveira, although, to be honest, in qualifying, on a hot lap… that one was absolutely fine.