Remember when MotoGP was – derisively, but accurately – referred to as the ‘Ducati Cup’?
Ducati do, too. And it’s a degree of dominance they can only dream of in 2026 after six straight constructors’ championships.
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The balance of power has shifted north-east from Borgo Panigale to Noale, home to what has always been Italy’s ‘other’ MotoGP brand, Aprilia.
The numbers prove it.
Ascertaining the best 10 riders of the first half of the 2026 season was harder than 12 months ago, primarily because of the rollercoaster ride of Marc Marquez, MotoGP’s sun who everyone else orbits around.
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Marquez’s health, availability, absence and then resurgence has underpinned the narrative, leaving the season delicately poised at its halfway stage with five riders from four teams and two manufacturers within 25 points – one race win – of the summit of the standings.
Who wins out from here is the million-dollar question. What’s not for debate is which riders are in a better place at the mid-point of 2026 compared to this time 12 months ago, and which riders would like a two-wheel time machine to rocket back to the good ‘old’ days of 2025.
In compiling our annual list of MotoGP’s biggest winners and losers year-on-year at the turn for home, it’s not appropriate to consider the biggest winner of all, if only because we didn’t brand him the biggest loser at the same stage last season.
After 11 rounds last year, Jorge Martin – in his maiden season at Aprilia after crossing from Ducati following his world championship win in 2024 – had competed in just one Grand Prix, which came in Qatar and ended abruptly when he fell in front of Fabio Di Giannantonio’s Ducati and was run into by the blameless Italian, Martin breaking 11 ribs and suffering a punctured lung.
After 11 rounds this year, Martin leads the world championship with 208 points – 208 more than he’d managed at the same stage last year – which makes comparing this year with the nightmare that preceded it completely useless.
Save for one underlying trend.
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It’s telling that, as you compare the points scored by each rider at the halfway stage of last season to this one, every Aprilia rider – not just Martin – is better off. Of the nine riders in better shape this year than last, four of them ride Aprilia’s RS-GP benchmark machine.
On the other side of the equation, every Ducati rider besides the metronomically-consistent Di Giannantonio has fewer points this season than last, which explains why Marc Marquez is more a contender this year than title certainty, as he was midway through 2025.
Comparing the stats between seasons of 20 riders – 2026 rookies Toprak Razgatlioglu and Diogo Moreira are excluded from this exercise – shows that Francesco Bagnaia’s fall from grace in 2025 has steepened this year; the two-time MotoGP champ has 54 fewer points than the 197 he had after 11 rounds last year.
Elsewhere, Pedro Acosta – set to take Bagnaia’s seat at the factory Ducati team alongside Marc Marquez in 2027 – is the only rider able to make a KTM sing, while all three Yamaha returnees are worse-off this year than last, Australia’s Jack Miller backing up the worst season since his 2015 rookie campaign in 2025 with a further points slide in 2026.
Halfway through last year, the Pramac Yamaha rider had 46 points; this year, it’s just 19. Fellow Yamaha riders Fabio Quartararo (32 points worse off) and Alex Rins (20) could sympathise.
None of that sad-trumpet trio made it into our biggest year-on-year losers category, though; here’s who has made the biggest gains (Martin excluded) in 2026 from 2025, and who has fallen well short of what they did last year halfway through this one.
(Note: all stats below are after the first 11 rounds of the 2026 and 2025 seasons)
FIVE BIGGEST WINNERS
+145 POINTS: AI OGURA (APRILIA)
2026 points/position: 194, 2nd
2025 points/position: 49, 14th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 46, 24%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 10, 20%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 148, 76%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 39, 80%
What a difference a year makes. This time in 2025, Ogura limped to the season’s mid-point still suffering the effects of a right leg injury from a crash at Silverstone in round seven, finding the transition as the reigning Moto2 champ tough as he sat well outside the top 10 in the standings. But the Japanese has proved himself to be a fast learner who methodically chips away at his weaknesses, and scored as many points in the final three rounds before the break in Czechia, the Netherlands and Germany (89) as he managed for the entirety of his rookie season. A climb of 12 places in the standings and being considered a legitimate championship chance as a sophomore is the result, and why he sits comfortably atop our ‘biggest winners’ list.
No rider has improved more than Ogura in 2026, who sits second in the standings at the halfway stage. (Photo by Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
+108: RAUL FERNANDEZ (APRILIA)
2026 points/position: 159, 6th
2025 points/position: 51, 13th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 59, 37%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 2, 4%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 100, 63%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 49, 96%
Ordinarily, scoring 108 points more than the equivalent time last year would have you on top of most biggest winners lists and as the number one in your own team, but Trackhouse Aprilia teammate Ogura has Fernandez covered on both counts, even if 2026 is by far the most convincing season of the late-blooming Spaniard’s five-year MotoGP tenure. While he’s fourth of the four Aprilias in the standings, the biggest change year-on-year for the 25-year-old is that his sprints are no longer a lost cause; he barely scored in the short-format races in the first half of 2025, but has already won two – at Mugello and Assen – in the opening 11 rounds of 2026. A leap in the standings has been a consequence, but a 2027 contract hasn’t as Ogura has undoubtedly wrestled the momentum away from his teammate within Trackhouse.
Bezzecchi crashes out in BRUTAL fashion | 00:43
+56: MARCO BEZZECCHI (APRILIA)
2026 points/position: 186, 4th
2025 points/position: 130, 6th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 33, 18%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 35, 27%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 153, 82%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 95, 73%
While recency bias makes it feel that Bezzecchi has done nothing but lose since his win at Mugello in round seven – his fourth Grand Prix victory in the opening seven Sundays – the first half of 2026 has been significantly better than 2025 for ‘Bez’, who nobody was talking about as a title contender a year ago despite him being just two spots lower in the championship than at the same point of 2026. Part of that is because of the compressed picture at the sharp end of the standings, and another part is that it’s more believable to think the Bezzecchi of the opening four rounds of 2026 is more real than whatever has happened in the past four, where he’s scored 13 points total. Sprints remain his weakness – they contribute even less to his overall total than last year – and will be the first thing pointed to if his title quest comes up short.
Even with his recent slump, Bezzecchi has been one of the big improvers of 2026. (Photo by EVARISTO SA / AFP)Source: AFP
+49: PEDRO ACOSTA (KTM)
2026 points/position: 148, 7th
2025 points/position: 99, 8th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 43, 29%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 17, 17%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 105, 71%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 82, 83%
You’d forgive Acosta if he spent most of his mid-season break on a physio table getting treatment on sore shoulders, as he’s carried KTM once again as he did for much of 2025. The Spaniard is just one of two riders inside the top 10 of the standings not on an Aprilia or Ducati, and he’s more than doubled his points in sprint races over the first half of 2026 relative to 2025, primarily because of his ability to repeatedly out-perform his machinery in qualifying and enhance his reputation as one of the hardest riders to pass once the lights go out. Acosta is only one place higher in the standings than he was this time last year, and while that first Grand Prix win remains frustratingly elusive, he’s working wonders on a bike his stablemates have struggled with.
+42: FABIO DI GIANNANTONIO (DUCATI)
2026 points/position: 184, 5th
2025 points/position: 142, 4th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 50, 27%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 50, 35%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 134, 73%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 92, 65%
MotoGP’s Mr Dependable blotted his copybook with a rare crash in the final race before the break in Germany – his first non-score on a Sunday since Catalunya last year, 17 races previously – but was a sure thing for this list despite dropping two positions in the race for the title after his Sachsenring spill. ‘Diggia’ owes his entire points gain year-on-year to Grands Prix, as he’s scored 50 points in the first 11 sprints of the year as he did in 2025. In a year where there’s no runaway leader at the top of the championship like last season, and where consistency looks destined to be as much of a factor as sheer speed, the Italian should see himself stay in this list by season’s end, and be in the championship conversation for much of the final 11 rounds.
FIVE BIGGEST LOSERS
-174: ALEX MARQUEZ (DUCATI)
2026 points/position: 87, 9th
2025 points/position: 261, 2nd
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 32, 37%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 95, 36%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 55, 63%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 176, 64%
It’s a little unfair to brand a rider who has missed three rounds with injury in 2026 as MotoGP’s biggest loser of the season, but that’s what the numbers tell us after the younger Marquez has found the going tougher than 2025, when he was remarkably good in the season’s first half. For context, his 261 points at the halfway stage of last year’s title chase would have easily led the standings in 2026; he was already 83 points behind brother Marc at the same stage, which explains why that stat gets overlooked. The Gresini Ducati rider finished second in nine of the opening 10 sprints last year (and won the other one at Silverstone), and while his percentages of points earned from sprints and Grands Prix have remained similar, there’s just fewer of them year-on-year. In finishing runner-up in last year’s championship, Marquez averaged 21 points per round; that’s down to 10.9 in 2026, explaining how he’s ended up here.
After they owned the first half of 2025, there’s been less to celebrate for the Marquez brothers so far in 2026. (Photo by Ronny HARTMANN / AFP)Source: AFP
-154: MARC MARQUEZ (DUCATI)
2026 points/position: 190, 3rd
2025 points/position: 344, 1st
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 73, 38%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 129, 37%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 117, 62%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 215, 63%
You can’t beat near perfection, which is what the reigning world champion was after 11 rounds of 2025, when he’d already won 10 sprints and seven Grands Prix to vacuum up 344 of the available 407 points, making his seventh MotoGP crown a matter of when, not if. The proportion of the 33-year-old’s points from sprints and Grands Prix replicates last year’s championship-clinching formula, and he’s already done the hard yards of dragging himself back from 102 points off the championship lead after seven rounds to just 18 after 11 as Bezzecchi has nosedived, Martin has flatlined and Ogura has surged. Even after sitting out the final four rounds of 2025 as he recovered from shoulder surgery, Marquez won last year’s title by 78 points; Aprilia’s ascension and a deeper field of contenders makes that margin unlikely this time, but he’d happily take far fewer points than 2025 if the outcome was the same.
-93: FRANCO MORBIDELLI (DUCATI)
2026 points/position: 46, 16th
2025 points/position: 139, 5th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 10, 22%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 37, 27%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 36, 78%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 102, 73%
Pour one out for Morbidelli, whose appearance on this list is absolutely no surprise, and absolutely justification for his ninth MotoGP season being his last. Every other Ducati rider – even Alex Marquez and Fermin Aldeguer, who have each missed three rounds with injury – sits inside the top 11 of the standings as Morbidelli languishes in 16th, while seven of his paltry total of 10 sprint points came in the rain-affected lottery of Jerez in round four, where he splashed his way onto the podium. Apart from that, the 31-year-old has been relatively anonymous, while his 13 total crashes for the season place him third behind Jorge Martin (16) and Joan Mir (15), a list – like this one – you don’t want to be near the top of.
-70: JOHANN ZARCO (HONDA)
2026 points/position: 34, 17th
2025 points/position: 104, 7th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 8, 24%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 18, 17%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 26, 76%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 86, 83%
If Alex Marquez’s appearance on this list is a little unfair, Zarco’s is a lot; the Frenchman hasn’t appeared since round six in Catalunya, where he had a horror first-corner crash that he – and his left knee – are still counting the cost of. Even before that injury, Zarco’s first half of 2026 – where he’s averaged 5.7 points per round – falls well short of what he did in the equivalent period of 2025 (9.5), a figure inflated by his remarkable Grand Prix win at home in Le Mans, and his second place to Bezzecchi next time out at Silverstone. MotoGP’s oldest rider – Zarco turned 36 last week – is set to return as soon as Misano in September, won’t need surgery after his Barcelona battering, and is under contract with Honda for next year, so it’s not all bad. This year, though, is a write-off at the halfway point.
Even before his Catalan GP crash, Zarco was struggling to replicate his stunning first half of 2025. (Photo by Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
-59: MAVERICK VINALES (KTM)
2026 points/position: 10, 22nd
2025 points/position: 69, 11th
2026 points in sprints/percentage of total: 0, 0%
2025 points in sprints/percentage of total: 21, 30%
2026 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 10, 100%
2025 points in Grands Prix/percentage of total: 48, 70%
Like Alex Marquez, Vinales has missed three rounds this year. Like Marquez, he’s one of our five biggest losers year-on-year. Unlike Marquez – and Zarco, another injury-affected rider on this list – Vinales likely won’t be back in 2027, after the left shoulder injury he picked up in a qualifying crash at the Sachsenring last year has lingered through to the German GP one year on, a race where he said he felt like “a stranger” in his Tech3 KTM team. Yes, the mercurial Maverick has been riding under physical duress in 2026, but 1.25 points per round when you’re chasing a new contract – and after you’ve already been through Suzuki, Yamaha and Aprilia to get to KTM – doesn’t sound like a roadmap to continue. MotoGP will be more dull without him, but it will be without him for the first year of the 850cc era in 2027 after this year’s horror show and his place on this list.