Winners and losers from MotoGP's frantic Czech Grand Prix

The MotoGP plot just keeps on delivering new twists. The Czech Grand Prix felt like a real momentum shift in this year's title battle, and also included a touch of the bizarre as the championship leader was banned from the race...

This victory came as a painful hammer-blow for all the other riders hoping to win the 2026 MotoGP world championship. After his maximum points haul in Hungary, there were suggestions that the recovering Marquez would not find things so easy on a physical, clockwise circuit like Brno.

Looking at the exhausted 33-year-old at the end of a long, hot Sunday, it's fair to say he had indeed worked hard. Yet still he topped the podium, defeating a hungry charger eight years his junior. He also dispensed with his team-mate Francesco Bagnaia in his usual convincing fashion.

Third place in the sprint race was also a handy chunk of points, allowing Marquez to end the weekend 32 points closer to Marco Bezzecchi than he had started it. The gap is now just 40. And the straws for his rivals to clutch at are all but gone.

Loser: Marco Bezzecchi Marco Bezzecchi, Aprilia Racing

Looking back, Bezzecchi never had a winning vibe about him this weekend. He admitted on Thursday that he had picked up injuries after being skittled out of the race by his team-mate in Hungary. He also shut down questions about the atmosphere between him and Jorge Martin, clearly in no mood to talk happy families at Aprilia.

On Friday, he conceded that he was feeling more pain from the Balaton hangover than he had expected. The following day, he managed fourth on the grid before notching up his fourth unforced sprint crash of the season – on the penultimate lap, no less. And we all know what happened in the gravel trap afterwards.

That altercation with a marshal betrayed accumulated frustration on Bezzecchi's part. But it led to even more in the form of the Sunday race ban. That guaranteed him a weekend without points, and Marquez took full advantage. What was even more concerning for the Italian was his middling pace across the weekend. It's hard to imagine the early-season grand prix king would have managed better than a distant fourth on Sunday.

With Bezzecchi in all manner of strife, it was left to Japan's rising star to prove that Aprilia's package hadn't gone off the rails. Since Mugello, he has begun to show better performance in the practice sessions, even on Fridays. This, in turn, is helping him move steadily up the grid, to the point where he delivered a maiden pole position at Brno. Given Ogura's habit of being the fastest man at the end of races, it wasn't hard to imagine that the Trackhouse Aprilia would disappear into the distance if he could manage things from the front.

It didn't quite pan out like that, but Ogura emerged from Czechia with his stellar reputation further enhanced. He fought hard and avoided mistakes as he succumbed to the experienced factory Ducati riders, Bagnaia and Marquez, in the sprint and grand prix respectively. He put together a full weekend performance at last, but says he still needs to work on his aggression in the early laps of a race. Current trends suggest he'll figure that out sooner rather than later.

Loser: KTM Enea Bastianini, Red Bull KTM Tech 3

Brno offered a glimpse of what KTM's returns would look like if you took Pedro Acosta out of the equation. The factory's flagship rider had a nightmare weekend on the mechanical side, getting hit by technical failures on all three days. He blamed his sprint fall on a stuck ride height device, and then his final-lap Sunday breakdown sealed his first points-free race meeting of the season.

KTM's reliability is becoming an uncomfortable talking point for the Austrian factory, particularly when you consider it was a failing RC16 that caused Alex Marquez's dreadful Barcelona accident. And with Acosta absent from the results sheets at Brno, suddenly KTM had only a 10th place to celebrate - thanks on this occasion to Enea Bastianini's Tech3 entry.

For the first time this season, the crash-prone Honda rider managed to bring it home in both the sprint and the grand prix. Not only that, he put in an excellent performance on his way to fifth place on Sunday.

Using the soft rear tyre was a daring option in the intense central European heat. The Mallorcan's decision to go with it went well and truly against the grain – though a cynic might quip that he wasn't expecting to make it to the end anyway. But make it he did, setting his quickest lap mid-race and avoiding any significant drop-off at the end.

The wild thing is that the 11 points he picked up at Brno almost doubled what he had earned in the season up until that point. Finally, Mir has produced a worthy race performance. It's on days like these that you still see glimpses of the man who won a world championship six years ago.

Loser: Jorge Martin Jorge Martin, Aprilia Racing Team

An errant torpedo named Martin caused a team disaster for Aprilia in Hungary. This time, at least, the Spaniard didn't take anybody down with him as he endured another forgettable weekend.

Saddled with a double long lap penalty resulting from his first-corner demolition job at Balaton, Martin was never going to get much out of the grand prix. But more worrying was the fact that he was never really on the pace. He had to go through Q1 on his way to a disappointing 10th place on the grid, then failed to turn heads on his way to fifth and ninth in the two races.

The factory Aprilia rider didn't blame his troubles on any post-Balaton injuries, saying simply that he was "lagging behind". It's been mostly downhill since his memorable comeback win in France last month, in fact. With Marquez on the charge and Bezzecchi possibly wobbling, Aprilia needs its world champion to find his form ASAP.

Photos from Czech GP - Sunday Marc Marquez, Ducati Team