Winners and Losers - Thai GP by Motopinion

Winners and Losers - Thai GP by Motopinion

So who came out of the opening round in Thailand shining like a Buddhist temple and who was left melting in the heat?

Winners

Definite winner - Simon Crafar. Although his decision regarding the Marquez/Acosta incident in the Saturday Sprint divided the paddock, he and his team should be applauded for the swift decision making. It took only 1m 20s to issue the instruction to Marquez to give up a place. (I think the VAR officials in English football could learn a bit from Simon). He won’t always get unanimous approval but, for me, this is much better than post race result changes. A small thumbs up to Marquez with regard to this incident. Unlike his team, who were visibly infuriated with Crater’s decision, Marc was magnanimous enough to accept the ruling.

KTM’s Pedro Acosta - What an amazing weekend for the young Spaniard, taking his first win, albeit a Sprint, and delighting the fans by taking the fight to Marquez. Not only that, he leaves the Far East leading the championship. The first time the KTM factory has ever had a rider top the table.

Raul Fernandez - Great to see the Trackhouse Aprilia rider proving last year’s Philip Island win was not a ‘flash in the pan’. A front row in qualifying followed up by two third places in the Sprint and the GP showed the paddock that he cannot be ruled out of challenging for another win this season.

Marco Bezzechi - Pole position and a GP win signalled his intention to be a championship contender this year. Had he not fallen from the lead in the Sprint, he could have scored a full house. Furthermore, his win in the GP was his third consecutive victory, counting the last two rounds of last year, the first time the Aprilia have had any rider achieve three wins in a row.

Diogo Moriera - LCR Honda’s rookie made an impressive start to his MotoGP career with two 13th places in both races and a 15th place in qualifying. To be pushing hard enough to be ‘knocking on the door’ and not crashing in your debut race is good sign of things to come for this exciting young Brazilian. 

Finally, Gunther Steiner - In his first race as Tech3 team boss, he managed to conduct his numerous interviews with the media without swearing. I’m certain this was broken during the debrief with his riders!

Losers

Yamaha - 14th in the race, 15th in the Sprint and 16th in Qualifying were the highest places the Japanese V4 could manage in this opening weekend. To put this in perspective, when Suzuki re-joined MotoGP in 2015 with only two riders, Aleix Espargaro and Maverick Vinales, they finished 11th and 14th respectively in their first race with their completely new bike and went on to both finish in the top ten in the following two rounds. Whilst Jack Miller and Alex Rins may be comforted by the fact they are fortunate to still be on the grid and now have no expectations to perform, former champion Fabio Quartararo will be counting the days when he can join Honda.

Pecco Bagnaia - Despite claiming to be happy with his 2026 Ducati and he had put his 2025 troubles behind him, unfortunately for him, it was more of the same. Blaming bad strategy for having to go in Q1 was one thing but failing to progress into Q2 and only squeezing into the top 10 in the GP was not the start he would have wanted.

Maverick Vinales - After proclaiming at the end of last year that he was happy with his KTM and recruiting former champion Jorge Lorenzo as his rider coach, a 19th in the Sprint and a 16th in the GP certainly didn’t back up the pre-season hype.