Ranking the top 10 riders of MotoGP 2024

The 2024 MotoGP season saw a thrilling title battle between eventual victor Jorge Martin and defending champion Francesco Bagnaia go down to the wire.

Although the season was dominated by Ducati – Maverick Vinales taking the sole grand prix win for a rival manufacturer on his Aprilia – there was no shortfall of action.

Ahead of a winter of significant change, who were the standout performers of 2024?

This year was a sobering return to Earth for Marco Bezzecchi after the Italian had won three grands prix and finished third in the championship in 2023. In fact, his return from this season had more in common with that from 2022, his first year in the category.

In his defence, year-old Ducatis just didn’t have the firepower they’d had in the past – unless your name was Marc Marquez. He kept trying all year, however, and delivered VR46 its only podium of the season at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Bezzecchi made a few more headlines than his team-mate in qualifying too, managing three front-row starts to Fabio Di Giannantonio’s none. Though he could hang onto his pace reasonably well in races when he finished them, failures to get to the flag cost him. There were zero-score weekends in France, the Netherlands and Australia – plus another three where he came close to a points duck.

Bezzecchi edges the likes of Aleix Espargaro and Alex Marquez here primarily on the basis that he’s still a relative newcomer to MotoGP, while Johann Zarco gets an honourable mention for his leading role amongst the Hondas.

9. Fabio Di Giannantonio

Strong runs to fourth in Thailand and Australia, his final appearances of an injury-hit campaign, allowed Di Giannantonio to usurp Bezzecchi for the honour of top VR46 rider

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There was often little to choose between the VR46 riders, but Fabio Di Giannantonio was able to keep his nose ahead of team-mate Bezzecchi for most of the season as far as points-scoring was concerned. His pre-summer highlight was a fourth at Assen, and his early consistency was good enough to earn him a deal – announced in July – to ride a factory GP25 next season.

Retaining the lead in the intra-VR46 duel looked a tough ask when he fell in practice in Austria, missing that weekend’s races, even more so when he had to skip the last two races of the season to have some of the after-effects seen to by surgeons.

But, as in 2023, when he won his only race to date at the penultimate round in Qatar, Di Giannantonio came on strong late in the season. He built up a buffer over Bezzecchi with fourth places in his final two outings – Australia and Thailand. That was enough for him to still finish best of the yellow GP23s.

8. Maverick Vinales

Vinales was the only non-Ducati rider to win a Grand Prix in 2024, triumphing for Aprilia in Texas

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Maverick Vinales made as many headlines for plummeting in races and dramas including his Australia crash with Di Giannantonio as he did for his seven front rows, two sprint wins and outstanding Americas GP victory. But despite the many frustrations he delivered his fans, he was ultimately the only non-Ducati rider to win a grand prix.

More than that, his weekend in the United States was memorably dominant, encompassing pole, fastest laps and sprint success. He even raced through the field in atypical style after a poor start to the grand prix.

With his other sprint win having come a round earlier in Portugal, the Texas outing put Vinales third in the riders’ championship. His results tailed off from there and no challenge materialised, but it’s worth noting that he was the only rider apart from Martin and Bagnaia to make it through to Q2 at every round.

Races in Catalonia aside, he also generally had the beating of Aprilia’s hitherto de facto team leader Aleix Espargaro. One could argue, however, that this should be expected from a rider of Vinales’s pedigree and experience.

Binder’s year peaked early with second in Qatar, as he only narrowly edged Acosta to be the top KTM rider in the standings

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KTM delivered less than it had in preceding seasons, and Brad Binder’s results in 2024 matched that.

On the one hand, the South African conclusively beat factory team-mate Jack Miller, generally outqualifying him and scoring well over double the points of the Aussie. On the other, the experienced grand prix winner needed until the last race to spare himself the blushes of losing fifth in the championship – and victory in the unofficial non-Ducati class – to rookie satellite rider Pedro Acosta. All told, that has to go down as a middling return.

Second place in the Qatar opener promised much, but he would not see the podium again as his season drifted from there. Still, he was reasonably efficient on what was a difficult machine, making Q2 14 times, qualifying on the second row seven times and generally going forward in races. In contrast to Acosta, he also saved the majority of his crashes for the sprints!

Bastianini was edged out of a seat on a factory Ducati, but was not without his bright spots – victory at Silverstone was a particular highlight

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This was Enea Bastianini’s first proper season on the factory Ducati following his injury-hit 2023. But it delivered a disappointing return for the man who had earned the ride in the first place by winning four times on the satellite Gresini machine in 2022.

The Italian had fine moments in Britain and Emilia Romagna, as well as the Thailand sprint, but in between those he was often anonymous in Francesco Bagnaia’s shadow.

Bastianini ended up in a fight with Marc Marquez for third in the championship and ultimately lost to the man on the year-old bike. His move on Jorge Martin to win at Misano also left something of a bad taste.

Not fast enough often enough in qualifying, Bastianini countered this with good progress in races and a strong finishing record, failing to see the chequered flag only three times across all sprints and grands prix. Only Martin and Fabio Quartararo matched him in that regard.

5. Pedro Acosta

Acosta had a bright first year in MotoGP which cemented his rising star credentials

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By no means a finished product, but bearing in mind his rookie status and KTM machinery, Pedro Acosta was simply outstanding in 2024. The 19-year-old showed no fear for established names, racing wheel-to-wheel with senior statesman Marc Marquez at the very first round in Qatar, running as high as fourth in the opener.

He cooked his tyres and dropped out of contention in that race – the first of many times he would learn the finer arts of MotoGP the hard way in 2024. In fact, he topped the crash list for all sessions with 28. But his speed between slip-ups earned him leeway to do so.

In any case, this was always meant to be a learning year on the Tech3 satellite bike. Acosta nonetheless already had two podiums to his name by the Spanish GP in April – enough to seal a 2025 factory KTM contract shortly thereafter. He delivered another three following a mid-season lull, as well as a Motegi pole that ended in two disappointing crashes.

Acosta nearly finished as top KTM rider but the factory’s Brad Binder snuck past him at the last race of the season.

4. Fabio Quartararo

Quartararo’s class was hidden somewhat by his Yamaha’s limitations, but he comfortably outperformed those facing similar circumstances

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He was nowhere overall, placing 13th in the final standings, but the Frenchman scored more than double the points of the next rider in the unofficial ‘struggling Japanese manufacturer’ class, Honda’s Johann Zarco. And Fabio Quartararo took almost four times as many points as his team-mate Alex Rins, who is no slouch and winner of multiple grands prix.

Yamaha’s grip deficiencies and frustrations like running out of fuel more than once bugged Quartararo – and he was never shy to speak out about it. But once he hit the track, he gave nothing but his best and showed the class that made him a world champion in 2021.

Regular top 10 results from Misano onwards reflected non-stop effort. This stretch delivered the highlight of the season, a sixth place in the penultimate grand prix in Malaysia. That he got up after being skittled in the first-corner crash to deliver this result on his spare bike was also a credit to his determination.

3. Francesco Bagnaia

Wins were in plentiful supply for Bagnaia, but he missed out on the title through inconsistency

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A tally of 11 grand prix wins in a season – seven more than eventual champion Martin – puts Francesco Bagnaia in the MotoGP pantheon: only Giacomo Agostini, Valentino Rossi, Marc Marquez and Mick Doohan have won that many or more races in a season.

All of them won the world championship in those respective years – but bear in mind that Bagnaia’s tally was only just north of half the races in MotoGP’s ultra-long modern schedule. On top of those 20 Sundays came the Saturday sprints, in which he equalled Martin’s winning record with seven races but scored only three further podiums.

The 16 sprint podiums Jorge Martin took illustrated Bagnaia’s key 2024 failing: an inability to take seconds and thirds when not winning. That said, he was unbeatable once he had the bike to his liking. And while Martin’s few mistakes were all his own, Bagnaia’s defenders will point to his technical failure in the Le Mans sprint plus three incidents with other riders, on which there are inevitably a variety of opinions.

2. Marc Marquez

Marquez returned to winning ways after ditching his Honda for a year-old Gresini Ducati, a gamble that was swiftly validated

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Marc Marquez finally got his hands on a competitive bike after years of battling with his Honda’s declining powers. The overdue switch to a Ducati proved that the eight-time world champion’s genius was very much still there – he won three grands prix despite being on a year-old GP23 fielded by Gresini.

Another revealing statistic was that of the 22 podiums scored by GP23 riders, 20 of those belonged to Marquez. He not only showed up factory GP24 rider Enea Bastianini by beating him to third in the final points reckoning, but probably would have been further ahead had he avoided a few poor starts and qualifying disasters: he missed out on Q2 four times across the season.

But this was a year to rediscover his mojo and explore the Ducati’s limits – which he did with 24 crashes across all sessions – rather than go for points. Marquez’s injury woes now seem to be behind him as he gets set for the move to the factory team.

1. Jorge Martin

Despite being overlooked for promotion to the works Ducati team, Martin steeled himself to claim the crown with Pramac

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Jorge Martin aboard the GP24 was the fastest package out of the box most weekends in 2024. That, combined with a finishing record as good as anybody’s, explained why he led the points all season apart from three brief cameos by Bagnaia.

Grand prix mistakes while leading at Jerez and Sachsenring were pre-summer hints that trying to manage races was not his thing – but he responded to those well. After the break, his only tumble came in the Mandalika sprint (he remounted but failed to score), though there was also a wrong decision to pit for a ‘wet bike’ in drizzle at the San Marino GP.

Going full throttle even as the finale approached made it impossible for Bagnaia to catch him, despite winning the last three grands prix. Martin admitted to having had mental health issues early in the season, but the psychological strength he developed in response proved decisive. His steady ride to third in a tense Barcelona finale showed how far he had come on that front.

A consistent season that hit the right notes at the crucial moments proved the difference for Martin

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