The old motorsport axiom reminds us that, to finish first, first you must finish.
It’s something MotoGP championship leader Jorge Martin might need to take heed of if the Spaniard is to convert his mid-year lead in the title chase to the end of the season in Valencia in November.
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For while the Aprilia rider heads the standings with 208 points from the opening 11 rounds before the start of the second half of the season at Silverstone for this weekend’s British Grand Prix, there’s another metric where he stands alone.
History suggests it’s not a good omen.
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After 11 rounds, no rider has crashed more times than Martin’s 16 this season, per MotoGP’s published ‘falls report’ that documents every spill from every rider across all three world championship classes.
Those 16 falls are as many as Martin’s worst complete year for crashes, and a year that was a tale of what might have been for the Spaniard, 2023 when he came out on the wrong end of a season-long title fight with then-Ducati stablemate Francesco Bagnaia.
Martin leading the 2026 championship at the halfway stage is proof that all crashes aren’t created equal – just four of those 16 have come in either sprints or Grands Prix. But they are a warning sign in a title fight that’s tighter than any since the advent of the MotoGP era in 2002, and a points to crashes statistical anomaly that would create history if it holds.
WHAT THE STATS TELL US
Across MotoGP’s 22 full-time riders – we’ll exclude injury replacements, fill-ins and wildcards for the sake of this exercise – every rider has crashed, on average, 8.2 times across all on-track sessions this year, a little more than half Martin’s table-topping figure.
MotoGP crashes in 2026 (full-time riders only)
16: Jorge Martin
15: Joan Mir
13: Franco Morbidelli
12: Marco Bezzecchi, Alex Marquez
11: Marc Marquez
10: Pedro Acosta, Brad Binder, Fabio Di Giannantonio
9: Enea Bastianini
8: Jack Miller
7: Francesco Bagnaia
6: Fermin Aldeguer, Luca Marini, Diogo Moreira, Toprak Razgatlioglu
5: Ai Ogura, Johann Zarco
4: Alex Rins, Maverick Vinales
3: Fabio Quartararo
2: Raul Fernandez
Proof that when you crash is arguably more important than how many times you crash? Martin’s has four did not finish (DNF) results across 22 starts from sprints and Grands Prix; Honda’s Joan Mir, no stranger to the top-end of the annual crash stats tables, has just one fewer crash but 12 DNFs, and has made the chequered flag in just four of the 11 Grands Prix this season to explain his lowly 18th place in the world championship standings.
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Of Martin’s four crashes in races, two have had major consequences.
In Catalunya – a weekend where he crashed five times from opening practice to the Grand Prix and didn’t score a single point after winning the sprint and Grand Prix at Le Mans one round earlier – an enraged Martin shoved team manager Paolo Bonora upon his return to the Aprilia pit box, prompting a sheepish apology once tensions had cooled.
In the Grand Prix in Hungary, an out-of-control Martin speared into the pack as the field braked for the first corner at Balaton Park, taking out teammate Marco Bezzecchi, fellow Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez, and Ducati pair Fermin Aldeguer and Fabio Di Giannantonio; only Di Giannantonio was able to rejoin the race, all four other bikes – three of them Aprilias – out on the spot.
Martin largely confining his crashes to practice sessions in 2026 has been part of the reasons he’s retained the championship lead, but leading both the points and crashes table is a recipe for failure.
In the previous six years of recorded data, just once – when Bagnaia crashed 14 times and still won the title in 2022 – has that year’s world champion been remotely close to the top of the crash stats list.
MotoGP world champion crash rankings, 2020-25
2025: Marc Marquez (14 crashes, 12th overall in crashes)
2024: Jorge Martin (15, 10th)
2023: Francesco Bagnaia (7, 19th)
2022: Francesco Bagnaia (14, 8th)
2021: Fabio Quartararo (7, 12th)
2020: Joan Mir (5, 10th)
Another reason for Martin to become more circumspect in the second half of this year? The rider who has topped the crash stats for the past six seasons has finished no better than sixth in the standings by the end of the season, when KTM’s Pedro Acosta simultaneously showed his speed and inexperience with finding the limit on MotoGP machinery as a rookie two years ago.
Most crashes by year/championship position, 2020-25 (current grid only)
2025: Johann Zarco (28 crashes, 12th in world championship)
2024: Pedro Acosta (28 crashes, 6th)
2023: Marc Marquez (29 crashes, 14th)
2022: Marco Bezzecchi (23 crashes, 14th)
2021: Marc Marquez (22 crashes, 7th)
2020: Johann Zarco (15 crashes, 13th)
One round after his sprint/Grand Prix double in France, Martin spent most of the Catalan Grand Prix in the gravel and off his bike. (Photo by Mirco Lazzari gp/Getty Images)Source: Getty Images
CHAMPIONSHIP CONSIDERATIONS
Mir nearing the top of the crash standings after 11 rounds is hardly a shock, but not exactly costly, either.
The 2020 world champion – who, ironically, annexed that year’s title for Suzuki by winning just one race but being uber-consistent and a reliable finisher – has averaged 21 crashes per season since he switched to Honda in 2023, and has just 26 world championship points to go with his 15 crashes this season.
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Martin’s crash tally relative to his rivals for the title is more cause for concern.
With just 24 points separating Martin from fifth-placed Di Giannantonio in the standings – MotoGP’s tightest top five after 11 rounds, usurping 2020 (28 points) as the closest top five in the past 25 seasons – the crash stats have the potential to be doubly costly.
Martin has crashed five more times than reigning world champion Marc Marquez, third in the standings and 18 points in arrears. Marquez, interestingly, has crashed almost as many times this season (11) as he did in all of 2025 (14), where he cruised to his seventh premier-class world title.
Martin’s factory Aprilia teammate Bezzecchi (22 points behind in fourth) has crashed four fewer times, but with greater consequences; Bezzecchi missed the Grand Prix in Czechia after he crashed in the sprint and was banned for striking a trackside marshal, crashed out early in the Dutch Grand Prix in an Assen race where the other three Aprilia riders locked out the podium, then crashed in qualifying in Germany and broke his left collarbone, a spill that required surgery and saw him miss the Sachsenring sprint and Grand Prix.
Di Giannantonio, 24 points behind the leader and fifth overall, had his first Grand Prix non-finish for 18 starts when he crashed at the Sachsenring, and has already crashed 10 times this year in 11 rounds after crashing just five times in 22 a year ago.
All of which leads to Ai Ogura. The second-year Japanese rider has been a revelation in 2026, taking his first Grand Prix podium (third in France), pole position (Brno) and victory (Assen) in the opening 11 rounds.
Ogura has stayed aboard his Aprilia and surged towards the top of the standings in just his second season. (Photo by Ronny HARTMANN / AFP)Source: AFP
What’s more, he’s crashed just five times – Honda’s Johann Zarco, who has missed the past five rounds with injury – has as many crashes – and Ogura has just one DNF, when his bike’s engine packed in when he was headed towards a maiden podium in Texas in round three.
After 16 crashes as a rookie last year, Ogura hasn’t crashed out of a single race in 2026, finishing all 11 sprints and 10 of 11 Grands Prix to be Martin’s closest challenger at the mid-year break, 14 points in arrears.
Ogura’s rate of progress, allied to his consistency and low crash profile, is why the 25-year-old is being spoken of as a genuine championship contender after just 29 Grand Prix starts in the most open MotoGP campaign in decades.
AUSSIES STAYING UPRIGHT
If 2026 really is Jack Miller’s last MotoGP lap – the Australian is expected to be replaced at Pramac Yamaha next season by Moto2 graduate Izan Guevara – he’s at least not going out by banging himself around.
At the season’s midway stage, Miller (eight crashes, 11th overall) is on track for his lowest crash tally since 2022, when he had 14 for the year in his final season with the factory Ducati team. Since, he’s featured towards the top end of the crash numbers; he had 21 for KTM in 2023 (equal fourth overall along with Alex Marquez), 20 with KTM in 2024 (fourth), and 25 last year with Yamaha, with only Zarco (28) crashing more.
Miller’s crash stats are well down year-on-year in his second season at Pramac Yamaha. (Photo by Ronny HARTMANN / AFP)Source: AFP
In Moto2, where the total number of crashes (139) are understandably far fewer than MotoGP’s 186 given there are no sprint races in the intermediate class, Miller’s compatriot Senna Agius has crashed just three times in 11 rounds after a season where he went down just five times for all of 2025. Agius’ teammate, Moto2 series leader and fellow MotoGP aspirant Manuel Gonzalez has crashed just twice.
Australia’s sole representative in the Moto2 class, Joel Kelso, has continued his trend of bringing the bike home in one piece more often than not in 2026; Kelso, who has never crashed more than nine times in a single season (2025), has crashed just four times in the opening 11 rounds.