It’s funny. You look at the scoreboard, and you think – Well, Marc Marquez ultimately had it easy. Winning the world championship by a nearly 100 point margin, with 11 victories and thinking there wasn’t much of a year to write home about. And yet, this was without question the wackiest MotoGP season I’ve ever covered as a fan, it was ridiculous to witness as a fan both on and off the track.
Marc Marquez really was as good as advertised. But his brother broke through and the brotherhood became a chokehold on the top of the standings. Pecco Bagnaia became the main character down the stretch as his entire season imploded on itself. Jorge Martin missed three quarters of the season through injury and tried to leave his team via taking them to court of an injury clause that may or may not have existed. Pedro Acosta also tried to leave KTM, had a sulk, then stopped trying to leave. Oh and KTM still might not be here by 2027. Honda actually broke through the concession barrier, and Yamaha’s getting desperate to hold onto Satan’s Strongest Soldier.
And that barely covers all of the drama. So, over the next two weeks and several thousand words, I’ll try to make sense of the 2025 MotoGP season, factory by factory, team by team, and rider by rider. As usual, we’ll go in reverse manufacturer championship order, and factory teams go last. Ratings out of 10, key stats, you know the drill by now. Here’s the schedule:
Part 1 – Moto3, Moto2, Yamaha, Honda / Part 2 – KTM, Aprilia, Ducati, Summary
Let us dance. All average finish stats include DNF’s in retirement order, expertly calculated by Jason the M101 Discord Shuckle (Don’t ask, many thanks to him.) Oh, and the averages are GP’s unless said otherwise, as they carry more importance. Cool? Cool.
Moto3
Only fair I talk about the juniors in this review too, and well… Moto3 felt like a hot mess in 2025. Even with its greatest single-season of all-time in David Alonso’s 14-win reign of terror in 2024, its overall graduation class was incredibly strong. Dani Holgado, Colin Veijer and Ivan Ortola, all race winners in that same season all came up and all had their moments and beyond in Moto2, so I was curious to see the lay of the land going into 2025.
Turns out, when Jose Antonio Rueda won at Aragon last year, it was a sign of what was to come. The 20-year old from Seville came out of the traps blazing, winning five out of the first seven and I thought for a while we were having another Alonso on our hands. And while the dominance didn’t quite reach those levels, it was a Championship that was effectively done by the break because the chasing pack kept tripping over each other and Rueda kept winning key rounds to stay in front.
That chasing pack though was solid. Angel Piqueras did kick on from a stunning rookie win in Misano to take four wins in 2025, and take the runner-up spot. He was brash, fast, bullish, didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, and while his season did slow down towards the end of the year, he did enough to move up with his MT-Helmets MSi squad for Moto2 in 2026.
Without question though, the breakout star was Maximo Quiles, the Marc Marquez training camp buddy who surged into the elite of the class immediately. The double European Talent Cup Champion had to wait until Austin to debut as he wasn’t 17 until the end of March (You get a year exemption if you’re Top 3 in JuniorGP), but he immediately made an impact qualifying on the front row and finishing fifth on debut.
He followed that up with his first win in just his fifth ever start at Mugello, arguably the toughest Moto3 race to win on the calendar. Three wins across the season, and while he again struggled a little more on the tracks outside of his European comfort zone, he treated Top 6 like the floor for most of the season. Third overall, best rookie over Alvaro Carpe by nearly 60 points despite missing four races through age and injury. With both Rueda and Piqueras moving up, it’s hard not to make him favourite for 2026.
While there were some fun breakout riders like Alvaro Carpe, Valentin Perrone and Guido Pini being riders to watch for next year, it’s hard to ignore that this was a brutal season for injuries, and we had more reminders that this class skirts a fine line between entertainment and danger very closely.
This was a season of huge near-misses. Luca Lunetta was run over on the final lap of the Assen TT and broke his leg, missing four races. David Munoz broke his leg in a huge crash in Mandalika and missed four rounds. And of course, the horrendous freak accident at Sepang which ended with Noah Dettwiler and Rueda suffering cardiac arrests on the track, two open fractures, and ethical questions over whether the Sepang race should have even happened. We’re so, so lucky that no-one ended up a statistic on the world stage (JuniorGP sadly had it far worse), and we’re still having the same question marks over the safety of the class, with the promised R7 reboot not landing until 2028. Yay.
Moto2
Just as mad, but in a very different sort of way. Moto2 had 11 different winners this season, a record for the category since its inception in 2010. Of them, six riders won more than once (Oncu, Moreira, Dixon, Gonzalez, Agius and Holgado). Boscoscuro got somewhat found out as a chassis supplier too. After winning the title in 2024 via Ai Ogura, they sunk to 5th in the outright standings via Jake Dixon, who started well, but faded down the stretch.
Manu Gonzalez dominated the early running of the season, winning four out of the first nine, despite some hiccups like running the wrong compound of tire in a very greasy Austin. But amazingly, he didn’t win a Grand Prix for the rest of the campaign, and spent the last eight weekends off the podium.
It opened the door for Diogo Moreira, who came off a really rough start, and a nightmare crash at the Sachsenring with David Alonso, to go bananas in the clutch. Moreira was 61 points behind Gonzalez after the French GP, and after Gonzalez’s second place in Indonesia was taken away via a homologation breach, the Brazilian won the title by 29, a huge turnaround that included wins in Assen, Indonesia and Portimao. I don’t think there was an S-Tier talent in this field, but sometimes you win a world title by being scrappy, and Moreira hands were rated E for everyone. Brazil has its first ever GP World Champion, with a three-year Honda contract and a home race for fans to flock to in 2026.
Manu Gonzalez was devastated to lose the title the way he did. Even with his awful Valencia finale and his Indonesia DQ, he likely just misses out. I suspect that Dynavolt will have something to answer for as to where the season went so badly wrong. It was so rough I think Secret Base is planning a “collapse” video on it.
The chasing pack had so much intrigue behind it. Dynavolt has two heavy hitters with Senna Agius breaking free and winning both at home in dominant fashion, and arguably the race of the year at Silverstone. Both Aspar’s won as rookies with Dani Holgado taking the overall Rookie of the Year mantle and a pair of victories, and David Alonso taking Balaton Park from 11th on the grid.
Deniz Oncu won twice at Aragon and Germany before a horrific training injury ended a promising season half way through. Barry Baltus was a revelation this season, the Belgian finishing in second five times across the year, and has basically become the new Aron Canet. And if MS-Helmets is back to its former glory via the Kalex chassis they’ve switched back to, Angel Piqueras could be a dark horse if he adapts quickly.
It’s not a surprise Moto2’s title was the only one that went right down to the decider, it’s almost always been the class that comes down to the slim margins, and is ultra-competitive. I can’t wait to see what 2026 brings. I don’t think 10 potential title contenders is an exaggeration.
Yamaha (Manufacturer Ranking: Fifth – 247 Points = 30.3%, Tier D for 2026)
Yamaha swung for the fences all year in MotoGP. And while there was definitely a tangible uptick in performance, it couldn’t from slipping down to the bottom of the board. For perspective, they scored just 124 points last year, so they essentially doubled their total, and moved their concession percentage up from 16.7 to 30.3. On any level, impressive. Just you know, relative.
They made a power play to convince Pramac to sign a seven-year commitment to the Japanese factory, including their own Moto2 team, and factory-level development. Having the two extra bikes on the grid likely helped internally, but the results weren’t as all-round nice as hoped.
The YZF-M1 was clearly a “Goldilocks” bike, where if it was in just the right window and specifically in Fabio Quartararo’s hands, it was very quick. Quick enough where he could genuinely challenge for wins on rare occasions. But if it was too hot, too cold, too much tire wear or not enough grip, it struggled. It was almost a recurring joke seeing Fabio qualify well, only to slide down the order as the Sprint or Grand Prix kicked on.
It’s hard not to talk about Yamaha without revolving a lot of the dialogue around their French ace. Ninth in the Championship is a big improvement on 2024, but it’s still feels like another year lost as Quartararo enters his Age 27 season next year, still just four years removed from his World Championship win. Everyone else struggled immensely. I’m not sure what Alex Rins is as a rider entering 2026 and three years since his horrific leg injury.
Jack Miller tried his best but just barely held onto his job with World Superbike teams kicking the door down for him, and Miguel Oliveira got injured again early on in the season with a damaged collarbone and never really adapted to the Yamaha from his days as an Aprilia rider. In fact, Fabio Quartararo scored 201 points, Miller, Rins, Oliveira and V4 debuting wildcard Augusto Fernandez combined had 198. This was supposed to be a much richer depth of field for Yamaha, but it just doubled down on their status as a top-heavy brand with one quality rider, and we’ve seen how that’s played out across the garage at Honda.
Yamaha went all-out in bringing their new V4 engine to Misano early to try to keep Fabio sweet as he enters the last year of his contract. But given Fabio seemed unhappy during his first private test on the bike, it may be the final catalyst for the Frenchman to leave if Yamaha can’t get its house in order quickly.
Toprak Razgatlıoğlu, Triple World Superbike Champion joins Pramac for 2026, but is going to have a hard time getting used to a more powerful, temperamental bike, with Michelin tires for just a year before the series switches to Pirelli’s for 2027. At least it’s something Toprak will be more familiar with right off the bat. YIn any case, I expect Toprak to be a work in progress at best in his first season, it’s really hard getting used to modern-day MotoGP prototypes. As flashy a signing as he is, he’s unlikely to be a needle mover for a team that needs more star quality in the short-term.
On any level, the concessions are working. Yamaha are definitely a way better last than Honda was in 2024. But if you’re them, the mission for 2026 is now simple – Keep Fabio at ALL COSTS, otherwise you’re in serious trouble. V4 or bust?
Prima Pramac Yamaha (11th)
Jack Miller – 17th in Points (79), 5 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 5th / Average Start: 11.7 / Average Finish: 14.4
Sprint Ranking: 18th / GP Ranking: 17th
Miguel Oliveira – 20th in Points (43), 2 Top 10’s, Best Finish: 9th / Average Start: 16.1 / Average Finish: 14.5
Sprint Ranking: 22nd / GP Ranking: 20th (18 Races)
If you were a new fan, you’d never guess that Pramac were coming off two straight years with a World Championship. They won the Teams Title in 2023, and of course had Jorge Martin last season. There was always going to be a knockback from the Ducati divorce, but going from being team champs in 2023 and runners-up last year to being stone dead last is alarming for Gino Borsoi’s camp. Surely, this wasn’t the expectation after rubbing the monkey’s paw?
Jack Miller is still every bit a joy to work with and his feedback and experience is invaluable in a project like this, but as said with Fabio, no one’s here for 17th place in the standings, tough year or not. He had a few highlight reel days, like finishing 5th in Austin in the rain, and was generally quite strong in the opening third of the season, but like many a vintage Miller season, it was littered with DNF’s in Grand Prix – Seven of them.
Only Joan Mir had more, and the crash from a Top 6 spot at home in Philip Island was particularly gut wrenching. Miller had a lot of offers from World Superbikes to take him, but he wanted to stay with Pramac, winning the battle with Miggy to confirm his ride, even if he had to get bitchy about it with the press to force their hands.
Miguel Oliveira was a dead man walking, not that we knew it in March. He already came into Pramac thinking it could be his last chance in MotoGP after Trackhouse chose to back Raul Fernandez over him, but an early collarbone injury derailed his entire season in Argentina. He missed four races via a delayed recovery (cryofreezing the injury somehow made it worse), and even when he came back, he never got used to the Yamaha like he did previous bikes. Even a couple of golden chances with wet weather went begging at Le Mans and the Sachsenring. With all that in mind, Pramac pulled the plug a year early to move him on for Toprak. A risky play, but an understandable one.
As I said in my Portimao DRR, Miggy will go down as one of the ultimate “streets won’t forget” riders, with five top-flight wins in rain and shine, for a KTM factory team that still hasn’t won a GP since he left in 2022. He’ll be missed, but could be an immediate title contender in World Superbikes under the BMW badge. We shall see.
Jack Miller – 3.5/10 / Miguel Oliveira – 2/10
Monster Energy Yamaha (6th)
Fabio Quartararo – 9th in Points (201), 1 Podium, 5 Pole Positions, 13 Top 10’s / Average Start: 5.07 / Average Finish: 10.8
Sprint Ranking: 8th / GP Ranking: 10th
Alex Rins – 19th in Points (68), 3 Top 10’s, Best Finish – 7th / Average Start: 15 / Average Finish: 13.4
Sprint Ranking: 20th / GP Ranking: 18th
Alex Rins is… what he is at this point. He’s tried his best off the back of his severely broken leg to adapt to the Yamaha but he’s still nowhere near Fabio’s brilliance. It sucks that the most high-profile moments of Rins’ season was when he was slipstreaming off a faster rider to shithouse his way into the occasional Q2.
He’s been kept on for 2026, mostly because I suspect Yamaha hasn’t found anyone convincingly better to replace him with. That feels like a backhanded compliment. I fear that this is all he has left as a MotoGP rider and it would be a crying shame if the days of him on a Suzuki are nothing but a memory going forward, because at his best, he was a Top 5 rider in the world. Not anymore.
Across the garage, man did Fabio give it the ol’ college try, as he has done seemingly for the last four years now. Once again, the only Yamaha with any sort of pulse across the season, and if he stood out for anything, it was his exceptional qualifying pace. Five pole positions, including three in a row in Jerez, Silverstone and at home at Le Mans, were mindblowing given how established we thought Ducati were going in.
At his best, he is still every bit the juggernaut he was when he was a perennial title contender. But as we said, he was so often held back by his bike’s limitations in longer runs. Start on pole, finish seventh, that kind of thing. In fact, Fabio Quartararo’s average start this season was exactly five. Only the Marquez brothers were better on average. But those averages also tell the alarming truth – Finishing five places worse off than where you started is never ideal.
Hell, Fabio should have won the British Grand Prix until a ride-height device failure cruelly ripped it out from underneath him, gift-wrapping a free win to Marco Bezzecchi. The visceral pain of seeing Fabio kneeled on the track in shock was one of the images of the 2025 season and it summed up everything right and wrong with the factory as they enter another critical year. Dear Dorna, you don’t need to show clips of Thomas every time something happens to him, y’know?
With Fabio not digging the new V4 engine from Yamaha so far, and after repeated messages that he will not wait around to see another cycle of developmental hell, is this the moment where he pulls the trigger and enters free agency for the first time as a MotoGP rider? If he does, everyone on the grid needs to be on notice, because on paper – I think only one rider is definitively better than him, and he’s in red. And not Italian.
Fabio Quartararo – 8/10 / Alex Rins – 3/10
Honda (Manufacturer Ranking: Fourth – 285 Points = 35%, Tier C for 2026)
Across the paddock in the battle of the Japanese Cup, there’s a genuine case that Honda may end up winning the 2025 Motorsport101 Award for Most Improved. While it’s still a long shot to say that the Honda Motor Company is “Back”, they took a big leap in the right direction. Don’t forget that this team scored just 75 points in 2024, just 10.1% of the maximum available. This year, they got up to 35 percent, the biggest single-leap of any factory here, and EXACTLY enough (to the point) to cross the threshold into Tier C, which was met with warm celebration. Because after all, who wants to do extra homework?
For those unaware, moving into Tier C means Honda can no longer test wherever they like. They lose the right to have their Grand Prix riders test, they can no longer develop their engine over the course of the season, they lose an aero change to the bike, dropping them to 1, they lose 2 engines from their allocation for the season, and they lose 40 tires across the season.
Hiring Romano Albesiano from Aprilia was the big catalyst that inspired change from within Honda, something they’d been searching for for years prior. They didn’t need Marquez to bail them out and they still got some big results regardless. A smoother Honda, one that wasn’t on a knife-edge all the time, decent on its tires, wasn’t so dependent on its front-tire for pace in a world where Ducati made it home on its rear. At its very best, a genuine contender running with the sports best.
And while the conditions were freakish and tactics played a huge role in it, they won their first Grand Prix since Alex Rins in Austin, when Johann Zarco made history at Le Mans. Even without that, he was runner-up in Silverstone when Ducati’s tires just didn’t work, and Joan Mir backed him up with two podiums in the dry – Motegi was his first in 3 years as a rider and it was a similar time span for the factory team.
Honda’s biggest weakness, now might be their rider line-up. They’ve committed to Zarco through his Age 37 season and his recent form is cause for concern. Joan Mir is fast but came down with a terrible case of the “crashies”, we don’t know what Diogo Moreira is going to be in the premier class, and Luca Marini is on a one-year “prove it” deal when he probably deserved better. There could be opportunities for Honda to swing big – Almost every massive name barring Marc Marquez could hit free agency in 2026, but will they? And if so, who for?
LCR Honda (10th)
Johann Zarco – 12th in Points (148), 1 Win, 2 Podiums, 7 Top 10’s / Average Start: 10.9 / Average Finish: 12.4
Sprint Ranking: 11th / GP Ranking: 13th
Somkiat Chantra – 26th in Points (7), Best Finish: 13th / Average Start: 21.4 / Average Finish: 16.9
Sprint and Grand Prix Ranking: 24th (19 Races)
Bless Somikat, this wasn’t on him. Remember, Honda’s ideal target for the Idemitsu bike was Ai Ogura, but he took the option to race with a Trackhouse Aprilia, so with Idemitsu wanting a South-East Asian rider, Chantra was the second choice. He was a good Moto2 rider, but never great, and he ultimately was just out of his depth at this level. It’s been a while since we heard such transparent struggles with a radar and adapting to prototype machinery, and while he did improve as the year went on (four points finishes in the final seven races), the damage was already more than done.
LCR ultimately had to separate from Idemitsu’s plan to have a guaranteed seat from SE Asia as a pipeline to sign Diogo Moreira, this year’s Moto2 Champion. And I’d be shocked if it wasn’t a huge upgrade. Somkiat heads to Honda’s World Superbike team with Jake Dixon and that feels like a better step for a rider of his level. Wish him well.
As for Johann Zarco… the definition of a tale of two seasons. He opened up like a house on fire early on. Seventh in Buriram, sixth in Argentina, fourth in the Sprint, fourth again in Qatar… then that moment in Le Mans. In front of 110,000 mad French fans, he became their first home winner in the Premier Class in 71 years. Arguably THE moment of the 2025 season. He backed it up with a second just a fortnight later at Silverstone. Through seven races, he was a genuine contender for rider of the year… then the skid happened:
Points scored in Zarco’s first 7 weekends: 97 / Zarco’s next 15 weekends: 51
That is an unmitigated disaster. At the pace of scoring after Silverstone, Zarco’s 17th in points rather than 12th, even if winning the Suzuka 8 Hours took some of the edge off of it. He had a win and a second in the UK, he didn’t finish a Sprint higher than seventh, or a GP better than ninth afterwards.
Now, there is genuine reasoning for it – Zarco struggled with Honda’s final updates for the 2025 bike and they went back and forth with the team to try and figure it out, but seven GP DNF’s in the last 66% of the season is poor and it reduces what was a brilliant season, into an average one, where he was just six points ahead of fellow Honda rider Luca Marini.
It’s a seed of concern in what was supposed to be no-brainer future planning. Zarco got a two-year extension with Honda as a reward for his efforts, and at the time, it made total sense to tie down their best rider. But committing to Zarco for two more years could be a risky move if he continues to struggle, with one less seat of flexibility across the fleet. And don’t forget, Diogo Moreira is tied down to Honda on a three-year deal, taking him out of this contract cycle entirely. Zarco gets bonus credit for two huge results, but Top 6 in points wasn’t out of the question in June. Will the real Johann Zarco, please stand up?
Somkiat Chantra – 1/10 / Johann Zarco – 6/10
Honda HRC Castrol (8th)
Luca Marini – 13th in Points (142), 14 Top 10’s, Best Finish – 5th (x2) / Average Start: 11.7 / Average Finish: 9.7
Sprint Ranking: 15th / GP Ranking: 12th (19 Races)
Joan Mir – 15th in Points (96), 2 Podiums, 6 Top 10’s, Best Finish – 3rd (x2) / Average Start: 11.1 / Average Finish: 15.1
Sprint Ranking: 13th / GP Ranking: 15th
Two erratically different seasons here, and very much two of the most common archetypes in racing. A consistent rider, and a risk-taking crasher who had more pace. You can probably guess who is who here.
Luca Marini was a rider who got better as the year went on. He was hanging around the fringes of the Top 10 and taking safe, comfortable points. His future was up in the air given he came in as the expensive 11th hour signing from VR46 at the end of 2023, but his loyalty made him and broke him in 2025. He went off to Japan to help Honda prepare for the Suzuka 8 Hours, even sticking around despite the factory telling him they were going to use Takumi Takahashi instead. The extra day’s testing led to a hellacious crash that punctured the Italian’s lung and put him in the hospital for a week. He missed three races and came back with the best result the factory team had managed since Marc Marquez’s departure, finishing sixth at the Sachsenring.
Marini quickly became the lynchpin of the team, only crashing twice all season, with 14 Top 10’s out of 19 GP starts across the season, and scoring a couple of fifth places at Balaton and Mandalika. He was great value for his one-year deal, if anything him and Zarco swapping contract lengths would have made way more sense for this writer. But he’s now to me, the most valuable rider in Honda’s arsenal and should be the blueprint to build their future around. Fun fact: That average GP Finish of 9.74 is the SIXTH best in the field, purely through bringing it home. Exceptional.
Joan Mir is an interesting case. In terms of raw speed, he is absolutely the faster man. Won the quali head-to-head 10-9 over Marini, and those podium finishes in Motegi and Malaysia were excellent examples of what the RC-213V could do at its very best, and without some of the Zarco-related shenanigans. When Mir DID hit the line, he had an average finish of 9.5, better than any other Honda.
But the DNF’s. NINETEEN OF THEM. 13 of them in Grand Prix. Now I need to be clear, they all weren’t MIr’s fault. There were a few that were completely not on him. In fact, he had a streak of three races in a row where Alex Marquez, Fermin Aldeguer and Ai Ogura all took him out of a GP, and the frustration had to be immense. But too many times did Mir take one liberty too many and crash his bike.
And it’s precisely why despite the stats in some ways looking better, he ended up nearly 50 points behind Marini and it’s just not good enough for a World Champion to be 15th in the standings on a bike that had Top 10 speed. And as said before, with Moreira and Zarco tied down and Marini likely in better standing, it’s a huge contract year incoming for Mir. If Honda makes a big swing at someone, he could be the victim.
Luca Marini – 7/10 / Joan Mir – 5/10
In Part 2, we talk about Aprilia, KTM and Ducati as we put a bow on 2025. See you then…
