German Grand Prix, preview, form guide, Sachsenring, Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha, rider market, Honda, Marc Marquez, Jack Miller

Fabio Quartararo; along with Marc Marquez and Pedro Acosta, it’s a trio who – in whatever order you choose – is widely regarded as the cream of the current MotoGP rider crop.

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Not Fabio Quartararo? Take a deep breath …

Francesco Bagnaia, Marc Marquez, Marco Bezzecchi, Jorge Martin, Enea Bastianini, Alex Marquez, Alex Rins and Aleix Espargaro.

Plus Johann Zarco, Fabio Di Giannantonio, Jack Miller, Miguel Oliveira, Maverick Vinales, Fermin Aldeguer, Raul Fernandez and – as of the most recent Grand Prix in the Netherlands – Ai Ogura.

It’s a growing group of 16 riders who – brace yourself – have won at least one Grand Prix more recently than Yamaha’s top-flight Frenchman, a jarring statistic that comes into sharper focus this weekend as MotoGP reaches the halfway mark of the 2026 season at this weekend’s German Grand Prix.

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It was at the Sachsenring on June 19 in 2022 that Quartararo won for the third time in the defence of his 2021 world title, leading all 30 laps of the race. It left him with a 34-point series lead over Aprilia’s Espargaro, and a 91-point advantage over his biggest rival, Ducati’s Bagnaia, who he’d overcome to win the title a year earlier.

Since? Nothing.

Bagnaia came back from the dead to win the 2022 title, then went back-to-back in ’23 before losing out to Jorge Martin a year later. Marquez’s seventh premier-class title last year made it four in a row for Ducati. Rider after rider after rider added wins to their tallies, or opened their accounts. Aprilia emerged as a contender last year, then became MotoGP’s factory to beat in 2026.

Yamaha, and Quartararo, became high-profile afterthoughts. Neither has won a race since.

This weekend’s German Grand Prix is different, though. With the 2027 rider market merry-go-round moving at a dizzying pace – seven of the top 10 in the standings have announced deals for next season within the past three weeks – Quartararo’s long-anticipated move to Honda for the first year of MotoGP’s 850cc regulation revolution is set to be revealed imminently.

Yamaha’s freefall – its 2026 move to a new V4 engine project, arguably rushed to the track this season in a last-ditch attempt to convince the 27-year-old to back its potential and stay – has faceplanted, the Japanese manufacturer cast ever-further adrift in a class of one at the back of the pack.

Quartararo, along with (confirmed) Alex Rins and (unconfirmed) Jack Miller, won’t be part of its four-rider line-up for the 850cc era. None will likely shed any tears about it.

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The Sachsenring this weekend will be a time, as it has been for the past four years, for Quartararo to look back and wistfully remember what was, while – this time – peer towards the future with greater optimism. There’s no guarantee Honda will be better, but it would be hard to be worse than Yamaha’s predicament since that June afternoon in Germany in 2022.

MotoGP has moved on since then, but it says much for Quartararo’s quality that his star has barely dimmed despite that drought. Next year’s change will be the opportunity he’s been craving to show why.

Here’s your Friday form guide and predictions for the 11th round of the 2026 MotoGP season, with the 30-lap German Grand Prix set for 10pm (AEST) on Sunday after the 15-lap sprint race at 11pm Saturday (AEST).

MARQUEZ TAKES AIM AT HISTORY AT HAPPIEST HUNTING GROUND

Marc Marquez arrives at the Sachsenring this weekend on the cusp of a milestone, with Ducati’s reigning world champion bidding to become just the second rider in MotoGP history to win 10 premier-class Grands Prix at the same circuit.

The 33-year-old’s record at the Sachsenring looks like a typo – in 10 MotoGP races, he’s won nine, and finished second from 13th on the grid in 2024 after he’d broken his left index finger and damaged his ribs after a monstrous 190km/h crash in Friday practice.

Before his MotoGP tenure, Marquez won three times in succession at the Sachsenring between 2010-12 in the 125cc and Moto2 classes.

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Only Giacomo Agostini, victorious at Imatra in Finland 10 times in 11 years between 1965-75, has won more at a single circuit than Marquez has at the Sachsenring, one of six anti-clockwise tracks on this year’s calendar where he’s combined for 31 victories.

Marquez, who is yet to get back to full fitness after surgeries on his right shoulder and right foot following his crash in the sprint race at the French Grand Prix at Le Mans in May, said on Thursday that returning to full health remains more an immediate priority than focusing solely on the title after he finished a circumspect seventh last time out in Assen.

“My biggest rival, what I’m more worried about, is my physical condition … the rest, I don’t care,” he said.

“Assen was one mentality, here is a different mentality, starting from FP1 and trying to understand where the level is. I would like to fight for the podium.

“When you arrive in this kind of circuit, if you achieve [victory, people say], ‘OK, it was his circuit’. I’m able to deal with that and try to do our 100 per cent. I continue with my mentality; it [the championship] was over three races ago. I’m in the game again, so let’s see if here we can do a great weekend.”

Marquez comes into Germany with a 40-point deficit to series leader Jorge Martin (Aprilia) after 10 rounds, but has scored more points than any other rider (82) over the past three rounds where front-running duo Martin (37) and erstwhile series leader Marco Bezzecchi (just 13) have struggled, Bezzecchi without a Grand Prix finish since he won the Italian Grand Prix at Mugello in late May.

On Thursday, Bezzecchi conceded his level for the weekend was an unknown after his massive 200km/h crash early in the Assen race, which saw him barrel-roll through the trackside gravel and come to rest perilously close to the barriers.

“It was not an easy week at home,” he said.

“The crash in Assen was a big one. Fortunately, no broken bones, but a lot of pain all over my body.

“Physically I’m very far from 100 per cent, so the target for me at the moment is not like a normal weekend. I hope to perform good. I hope to fight for the podium or the win.

“I will have try to manage everything for the whole weekend.”

MILLER BUSY BUT BUOYANT ON RETURN TO BEST EVENT OF 2025

Jack Miller will be on track for the fourth straight weekend before MotoGP’s four-week summer break after the Sachsenring round, the Australian hurrying back to Germany after a second successive podium finish for Yamaha in the prestigious Suzuka 8-Hour endurance race.

Miller combined with Japanese veteran Katsuyuki Nakasuga and World Superbikes rider Andrea Locatelli to finish second for Yamaha in last Sunday’s race in Japan, the trio runner-up to a Honda line-up spearheaded by six-time World Superbikes champion Jonathan Rea.

Miller’s dash to Japan came after back-to-back MotoGP weekends at Brno and Assen, while he plans to spend his break back home outside of Townsville from next week.

“I wasn’t there [Japan] long enough to get jetlag … I landed there Monday at midnight, was at a team meeting at 7am on Tuesday and was on track at 8.30,” Miller said on Thursday.

“It was kind of a blur, the whole week, but a good blur. It’s fun to do events like that, and when you’re racing the calibre of guys that are there, to race against Jonny [Rea] was a cool experience for me.

“I love doing different events like that, because at the end of the day that’s the reason I love racing. You go there and you have to just ride the bike, you’re not worried about set-up … you bite the bullet and get on a bike that’s maybe not set up for you perfectly, so you’re working on yourself.

“My longest stint was an hour and 26 minutes … you get to find that flow state which is a fun thing, it’s more and more difficult to find it on a MotoGP bike.”

Miller, who has a premier-class podium at the Sachsenring on his CV (third for Ducati in 2022), had his most successful weekend of the 2025 season in Germany a year ago, where he qualified ninth and had two top-10 finishes with fifth in the sprint race, and eighth in the Grand Prix.

“It’s a track that should suit our bike – no straights here – and it’s a track I like, so we should be right,” the Pramac Yamaha rider said.

“The weather conditions were a bit strange last year but we were semi-competitive, and with this year’s bike it’s easier to find the grip, keep it in that grip window. We should be on for a decent weekend.”

CRYSTAL BALL: FOUR FEARLESS PREDICTIONS FOR GERMANY

Winner: Marc Marquez (Ducati). Have you seen that Sachsenring winning record? Suggesting anything other than putting your money on red would be a stretch. Short of beating himself with a crash, it’s hard to make a case for anyone else at the strongest of his strong tracks.

Closest challenger: Jorge Martin (Aprilia). Were it not for Marquez, Martin would have a strong case for being cast as the favourite this weekend, and not just because he’s leading the world championship for the first time since the final race of 2024 in Barcelona, where he cemented his world title for Ducati. The Spaniard won the German Grand Prix in 2023, had the 2024 win in the bag before a needless crash on the penultimate lap, and has won two of the three sprints held at the track that goes left, left and more left since sprints came onto the calendar in 2023.

Podium smoky: Fabio Di Giannantonio (Ducati). The soon-to-be KTM factory rider – ‘Diggia’s’ move to the Austrian brand for 2027 was announced earlier this week – hasn’t done a lot in the past in Germany, with eighth (2022) his best Grand Prix result. But as 2026 has shown – a race win and third in the championship standings – the past doesn’t mean much for a rider in a career-best run of consistent form. Noteworthy: the Italian is one of just two riders – compatriot Luca Marini is the other – to have scored points in every Grand Prix this season.

Miller prospects: The 31-year-old Australian – like Yamaha stablemate Quartararo – will always find a return to the Sachsenring poignant; it was here in 2011 that Miller made his world championship debut in a one-off appearance in the 125cc field. Fast-forward 264 races, and Miller comes in off his second-best result of the season last time out at Assen, when he finished 12th. A similar showing looks to be the ceiling for his hopes this weekend.