The top 10 riders of the 2025 MotoGP season

The 2025 MotoGP season was a standout year for Marc Marquez and Ducati, but it also featured a host of star performances.

All of the plaudits and praise in 2025 has gone to 32-year-old Marc Marquez, who finally brushed the demons of his 2020 injury under the rug to win his seventh MotoGP world title and first with Ducati.

He faced little in the way of opposition, though younger brother Alex Marquez did give him something to think about at times in the first half of the campaign, while the growing threat from Aprilia will be cause for some concern.

Elsewhere, there were standout rookies, underachievers breaking out in a big way and some one underwhelming machinery punching well above their weight.

Below is Crash.net's ranking of the top 10 riders of the 2025 season in descending order.

10. Luca Marini, Honda HRC

Best result - 5th

Best sprint - 4th

Championship - 13th, 142 points

There was little excitement about Luca Marini being picked from a light pool of candidates to replace Marc Marquez at the factory Honda squad in 2024. His time on satellite Ducati machinery had yielded a handful of podiums, but he’d failed to put in the kind of displays peers like Marco Bezzecchi, Enea Bastianini and even Fabio Di Giannantonio managed.

A fairly underwhelming 2024 did pick up towards the end of the campaign, but Marini looked a much more competitive rider from the off in 2025 on a much-improved Honda.

Four top 10s in the first seven rounds offered a platform he was almost unable to build on after a serious Suzuka 8 Hours test crash ruled him out for three rounds. But when he returned, he stepped up a gear, achieving a brace of fifths in Hungary and Indonesia, as well as a fourth in the Hungary sprint.

He ended the year just six points shy of Honda race winner Johann Zarco, proving a dependable finisher and massive development asset for HRC.

9. Raul Fernandez, Trackhouse Racing Aprilia

Best result - 1st (Australia)

Best sprint - 2nd (Australia)

Championship - 10th, 172 points

A lot was expected of Raul Fernandez as Aprilia’s only returning rider in 2025. But after eight rounds, he had just two top 10 finish to his credit, was being tested hard by rookie team-mate Ai Ogura, and even came in for criticism from Aprilia CEO Massimo Rivola.

Trackhouse repeatedly denied it, but a test for Manu Gonzalez at Aragon on the team’s RS-GP offered a warning Fernandez did take heed of. From the Italian Grand Prix onwards, Fernandez was the best version of himself he’s ever been in MotoGP, consistently breaking into the top 10 before getting a first podium in the Indonesian sprint.

He seized his opportunity in Australia to grab a maiden grand prix victory, backing that up with a hard charge for a second in Valencia against Marco Bezzecchi just a week on from a big crash that took him out of the Portugal round.

Fernandez scored 106 points more in 2025 than he did last year. The potential Trackhouse saw in him came to the fore, but he must now cast aside his inconsistencies and make the second half of 2025 his baseline form in 2026.

8. Johann Zarco, LCR Honda

Best result - 1st (France)

Best sprint - 4th

Championship - 12th, 148 points

Turning his back on the best bike on the grid to join Honda last year was a bold move for a rider entering the twilight of his MotoGP career. But Johann Zarco was HRC’s only shining light in a woeful 2024.

For the first half of the season in 2025, he continued to be Honda’s leading contender, bagging top sevens for LCR in the first two rounds before scoring the brand’s best result in well over a year in Qatar in fourth.

The crowning moment of his season was his dominant ride to victory in the wet at the French Grand Prix; a historic moment aided by LCR’s brilliant call on what the weather was going to do at the start of the race.

A second-place finish at Le Mans capped off a springtime he’ll never forget, though his results did decline in the second half of the year as upgrades slowly filtered through to him. Earning a new contract to take him to 2027, Zarco’s results potential on the Honda remains high.

7. Pecco Bagnaia, Ducati Corse

Best result - 1st (America, Japan)

Best sprint - 1st (Japan, Malaysia)

Championship - 5th, 288 points

This is an entry that will either be too low for some or too high for others. But there is no denying that, relative to the lofty expectations set by Pecco Bagnaia, the 2025 season was nothing short of a disaster.

The double world champion never really gelled with the GP25, consistently lacking in front-end feeling, and being dealt the double blow of watching team-mate Marc Marquez effortlessly dominate on equal machinery.

Looking back, the sluggish start to his 2025 campaign was actually pretty solid. He had podiums five of the first six races, including a victory in America after Marquez had crashed out of the lead. Three more third-place finishes followed at Aragon, Assen and Sachsenring, before his season really went off the boil.

There was one top five between Brno and Misano, crushing Q1 exits in 15th and 21st in Hungary and Barcelona, before his vintage pole/sprint/grand prix clean sweep at Motegi. That was followed by disasters in Indonesia and Australia, a sprint win from pole at Sepang, but a run of five non-scores on Sundays between Mandalika and Valencia.

Bagnaia was 257 points behind Marquez in the standings and at a complete loss to explain any of his issues.

In a year in which he was expected to battle Marquez for the title at the start of it, he ended it with huge question marks over his future at Ducati.

6. Fermin Aldeguer, Gresini Racing Ducati

Best result - 1st (Indonesia)

Best sprint - 2nd (Indonesia)

Championship - 8th, 214 points

Ducati had Fermin Aldeguer locked into a contract before the 2024 Moto2 season had even started. And at one point, that promotion looked like it was hasty, as he struggled to mount a serious title challenge.

Stepping up to MotoGP on a year-old Ducati, the rookie of the year battle looked like it would be a hard one against Ai Ogura. But, under the guidance of crew chief Frankie Carchedi, Aldeguer was soon impressing. A brace of top fives in Qatar gave way to a brace of podiums in France.

He was on the podium again in Austria after a solid run of points finishes, before taking a maiden victory in Indonesia. Developing a strong ability to manage tyre wear, he used this to utterly dominate at Mandalika.

He was on the sprint podium at Sepang before a tyre pressure penalty denied him, but he bagged top five finishes in the final two rounds and eased to rookie of the year honours.

Ducati knew it had something special on its hands with Aldeguer. Nevertheless, he defied expectations to put in a stronger season than anticipated and suddenly position himself as a top piece in the 2027 rider market.

5. Pedro Acosta, KTM Factory Racing

Best result - 2nd

Best sprint - 2nd

Championship - 4th, 307 points

From his own personal standpoint, the 2025 season was a major disappointment for Pedro Acosta. After breaking out in a big way during his rookie campaign, many had Acosta down as a potential championship threat in 2025, and at the very least capable of multiple race wins.

Instead, he has now gone two full seasons without breaching the top step of the podium. The 2025 RC16 definitely wasn’t up to the task in the first half of the season, and frustrations boiled over for the Spaniard as he came to reckon with the reality that his aspirations were likely to go unfulfilled.

KTM made some upgrades to its bike for the second half, but it was a mindset shift that allowed Acosta to become a consistent podium threat. Taking until round 12 at Brno to get his first, he managed eight across both races across the final 10 events.

He lifted himself ahead of double race winner Pecco Bagnaia in the standings to fourth, and was 152 points clear of the next-best KTM rider. Acosta also went a second full season unbeaten by his team-mate in qualifying.

Acosta believes he “fought for nothing” in 2025. And while that may be true, he once again demonstrated why he is considered a generational talent and just how desperately KTM will miss him if 2026 proves to be his final season with the brand.

4. Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing

Best result - 2nd (Spain)

Best sprint - 2nd (Barcelona)

Championship - 9th, 201 points

There was a lot of buzz around Yamaha coming into the first races, after a strong pre-season on the M1 hinted at the Japanese marque being able to fight for podiums on a semi-regular basis. And while Yamaha certainly had a better year than in 2024, it did so largely because Fabio Quartararo extracted more out of that bike than should have been possible.

That was particularly evident between Qatar and Silverstone, where he dragged the M1 to the front row five successive times - four of which on pole - and finished second in the Spanish Grand Prix. There was podium potential at Le Mans without a crash in tricky conditions, while a Silverstone victory was all but guaranteed when he was cruelly denied by a ride height device failure.

Single-lap pace allowed Quartararo to get the M1 to race results it had no business of having otherwise, including strong top fives in Germany, Barcelona and Malaysia, with a couple of sprint podiums sprinkled in.

But the M1’s lack of power and grip meant there was only so much he could do. He was 122 points clear of the next-best Yamaha rider in the standings and was the only representative of a Japanese brand to crack the top 10 in the championship.

As Yamaha progresses to its new V4 era, Quartararo’s patience to have a race-winning package again looks to have run out. While his wait for a first victory since the 2022 German Grand Prix extends, there was no shortage of reminders in 2025 of the calibre of rider Quartararo still is in MotoGP.

3. Alex Marquez, Gresini Racing Ducati

Best result - 1st (Spain, Barcelona, Malaysia)

Best sprint - 1st (Britain, Portugal, Valencia)

Championship - 2nd, 467 points

Deciding between our second-placed rider in these rankings was incredibly difficult because Alex Marquez had a genuinely brilliant season. After a difficult 2024 on the GP23 Ducati, the jump to the GP24 led to an immediate step in performance for Alex Marquez.

Starting the season with a trio of second-place finishes, a maiden victory came at Jerez, while consistent sprint and grand prix podiums followed up to the summer break. At Brno, he made needless errors to register a double DNF, while a collision with Joan Mir netted him a penalty which held him back in Austria on a weekend in which he had podium pace.

Another fall in Hungary and a crash while leading the Barcelona sprint added further blots to his copybook. But his response in the Catalan Grand Prix, absorbing huge pressure from Marc Marquez on the factory GP25 to score his second victory of the year, was a reminder of the rider he’s become.

A third win came in Malaysia, as well as two sprint victories in the final two rounds. He scored almost 300 points more than he managed in 2024 to claim a convincing runner-up spot in he standings and earn a factory GP26 for next year.

Alex Marquez will always be compared to his older brother, but the 2025 season was proof beyond doubt of his level as one of the world’s best riders.

2. Marco Bezzecchi, Aprilia Factory Racing

Best result - 1st (Britain, Portugal, Valencia)

Best sprint - 1st (Misano, Indonesia, Australia)

Championship - 3rd, 353 points

In the summer of 2024, Aprilia made waves by signing eventual world champion Jorge Martin. Marco Bezzecchi’s appointment felt more like Aprilia ensuring a capable number two, rather than a rider who could step up into the role of team leader.

But faced with this on day one of pre-season testing after the first of four major injury woes for Martin, Bezzecchi quickly adapted into Aprilia’s development reference and its pointman on track.

The start to the season was solid enough, with strong race pace held back by underwhelming qualifying results. Things started to click at Silverstone, where he came from 11th on the grid to win the grand prix just days after Martin entered into a messy contract dispute with Aprilia.

The Aragon test a few weeks later proved pivotal, however, as Aprilia got on top of its stability issues under braking. Bezzecchi was fifth at Mugello, before bagging a brace of podiums at Assen, running Marc Marquez hard for the win in the grand prix.

That became a regular occurrence, with Bezzecchi on the podium in either a sprint or a grand prix in 10 of the final 12 rounds after the Dutch Grand Prix. Marquez’s absence through injury, after Bezzecchi triggered a collision with him in Indonesia, opened the door for back-to-back wins in Portugal and Valencia, while five poles demonstrated his time attack prowess.

Much like Alex Marquez, Bezzecchi made very few mistakes, though when he did, they tended to cost him podium opportunities. Ironing those out will be pivotal if he has any aspirations of fighting for the world title in 2026.

He proved he could win races before when he was a satellite Ducati rider. But to do so on completely different machinery, on the backdrop of major off-track drama, is a testament to Bezzecchi’s growth as much as it is the job Aprilia did in 2025.

1. Marc Marquez, Ducati Corse

Best result - 1st (Thailand, Argentina, Qatar, Aragon, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Misano)

Best sprint - 1st (Thailand, Argentina, America, Qatar, Spain, France, Aragon, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, Barcelona)

Championship - 1st, 545 points

If you were expecting anyone else at the number one spot, then you really haven’t been paying attention in 2025. There was little doubt that Marc Marquez came into the 2025 campaign as the favourite to win the world title, now he was partnered with a factory Ducati.

But the way in which he did so, winning three of the first four grands prix, then achieving seven 37-point weekends from Aragon to Hungary, claiming 11 grands prix wins overall and 14 sprints in the 18 rounds he actually started, is levels of domination we haven’t seen since he was last world champion in 2019.

There were early-season mistakes, in America and Spain, but those were quickly eradicated, with his only self-inflicted non-finish after that his fall from the lead of the sprint at Misano. More impressive were his results compared to those of Pecco Bagnaia and Fabio Di Giannantonio on the other GP25s, as both struggled to find consistency on the package.

Marquez rolled back the years to show the form that became all too familiar in his pre-injury days. But to do that at 32 years old in the wake of such a serious injury is something seldom seen in sport.

The unfortunate early end to his season in Indonesia, following a collision triggered by Marco Bezzecchi, denied us the chance to see just what he could do without the pressures of a world championship on his shoulders.

While there is a growing threat coming from Aprilia, it’s hard to see - providing he stays fit - how Marquez can be toppled in the form he is now in with Ducati.