The Dutch Grand Prix capped off a busy month of June in MotoGP, with three rounds taking place in the span of four weeks.
Assen crowned a new race winner in the championship, one with a very bright future in MotoGP, but the manufacturer he represented was once again left facing difficult questions after its factory team failed to deliver.
Here are the winners and losers from MotoGP’s Dutch GP.
Ai Ogura and Raul Fernandez
It was quite an achievement for Trackhouse to beat the factory Aprilia team in both races at Assen. The American squad clearly had the upper hand over Noale last weekend and ultimately, there was no competition between the two.
As far as Ai Ogura was concerned, a maiden MotoGP victory had been a long time coming. The consensus was that once the Japanese rider sorted out his qualifying woes, he would be a serious contender this season. He should have ideally won in Brno after taking a brilliant pole, but Marc Marquez was simply too good for him. This time, however, he recovered from sixth place on the second lap to take a convincing win.
Raul Fernandez also put together a stellar weekend, having quickly recovered from a bout of appendicitis that left him starved of energy in the Czechia. On Saturday, he was genuinely the quickest rider in the field as he earned a well-earned sprint win. While he didn’t have an answer to Ogura’s pace in the grand prix, another strong weekend now makes it impossible for Trackhouse not to re-sign him for 2027.
Loser: Marco Bezzecchi
It’s hard to sugarcoat Marco Bezzecchi’s sudden fall from grace in June. Firstly, he is yet to find a solution for his long-running sprint woes. This weekend, he lost out not only to the Trackhouse duo, but also to the VR46 Ducati of Fabio di Giannantonio on Saturday after struggling for confidence in the early laps.
But more concerning, there have been far too many weekends where he has simply been too far off the pace. At Assen, it appeared he had finally rediscovered his mojo after dominating all practice sessions. But when it came to the business part of the weekend, he was never really a contender.
On top of that, he is still making unforced errors like the one that sent him out of the grand prix. Bezzecchi finds himself in a very challenging position at this phase of the season. Of course, with 12 races to go, he can easily rebound and win the championship. But he will have to put a gruelling month of June behind him after failing to score in three consecutive Sunday races for a variety of reasons.
Winner: Fabio di Giannantonio
While clearly no match for the Trackhouse pair, this was another weekend where Fabio di Giannantonio nicked away at the championship leaders. The Italian has won just one grand prix so far this year, and yet he has been so consistent that he now sits only 16 points behind championship leader Jorge Martin in third. The gap to second-placed Bezzecchi is down to just nine points.
He particularly shone in the sprint, briefly putting pressure on Fernandez for the lead before settling into third behind Ogura. His advantage over the next Ducati was 3.5s in what was only a 13-lap race.
On Sunday, he wasn’t the quickest Ducati in the field. That honour should go to Francesco Bagnaia, who retired with suspected brake issues. But di Giannantonio provided the most fireworks, engaging in a feisty battle with Marc Marquez for position. His late-race charge after the penalty was also impressive, as he picked off both Marquez brothers to finish fourth.
The only blot in his copybook was that he forgot the rule requiring him to slow down by a second after cutting the final chicane, which earned him the aforementioned penalty.
Loser: Marc Marquez
It’s hard to put Marc Marquez in the loser category, especially after a weekend in which he lost no ground in the championship fight. He arrived in Assen trailing Bezzecchi by 40 points and left the Netherlands with the same deficit to new championship leader Martin.
However, the Dutch GP exposed Marquez’s physical limitations at a track that doesn’t suit his riding style. After his comeback victory in Balaton and an even more impressive triumph in Brno, it would have been easy to assume that he would be racing at the sharp end of the grid every round, no matter what his fitness level. But Marquez was never really in the game last weekend, despite his feisty performance on the soft rear in the grand prix.
This was also one of the weekends when Marquez had to be extra cautious, aware that any crash on Assen’s unforgiving gravel traps could lead to an injury. As such, he was only the fourth-fastest out of the five Ducati riders who competed in Sunday’s race.
Winner: Yamaha
In terms of results, this was easily one of the better rounds of the season for Yamaha. Fabio Quartararo was able to haul his M1 into Q2 and end up only half a second off pole position.
While Yamaha riders didn’t report an improvement in how they felt on the bike, both Quartararo and Alex Rins finished inside the top 10 on Sunday, comfortably outperforming the best of the Hondas. That was despite Quartararo reporting some arm pump issues at one of the most physically-demanding tracks on the calendar.
Even Toprak Razgatlioglu put together an impressive performance from the very back of the grid, climbing to 11th in the early laps behind Quartararo. Only a severe chattering issue that made it “impossible” for him to ride the bike forced him to dive into the pits and retire at the midway point of the race.
Loser: KTM
Two rapid technical issues for Pedro Acosta on Saturday cast KTM in a poor light once again. Questions had already been raised about the RC16’s reliability after Barcelona, where Acosta suddenly slowed down with electrical issues and triggered a major accident with Alex Marquez. Acosta’s retirement in Brno the week before didn’t help matters.
In Assen, even the Spaniard himself admitted that there were safety implications to the situation, with a stuck throttle leaving him with what he described as the “worst feeling on a motorcycle”. The stoppages, which happened in FP2 and qualifying, also left him short of track time and contributed to his sub-par showing in the sprint.
KTM wasn’t to blame for Acosta’s retirement on Sunday. Carpal tunnel syndrome left Acosta’s wrist numb and forced him out of the race. But the fact that many initially assumed another mechanical issue had caused him to stop says everything about the current perception of KTM.
