2016 MotoGP World Championship
The 2016 MotoGP World Championship was the top class of motorcycle road racing for its 68th season. The defending champion was Jorge Lorenzo, who had won the 2015 title. Marc Márquez won the riders’ championship for the third time after his fifth win of the year at the Japanese Grand Prix gave him an unbeatable lead with three races remaining. He finished the season 49 points ahead of Lorenzo, who started strong but struggled in wet races and did not win in the dry until Valencia; it was his last season with Yamaha before moving to Ducati in 2017.
Valentino Rossi was Márquez’s main challenger, but he crashed three times before Márquez clinched the title in Japan. Yamaha endured a long win drought from June onward, going eight races without a win and extending to ten before Lorenzo’s Valencia victory. Rossi finished as runner-up, 16 points ahead of Lorenzo, and Yamaha won the teams’ championship, while Honda won the manufacturers’ championship.
Tito Rabat was the season’s only rookie, earning Rookie of the Year. Cal Crutchlow, riding for LCR Honda, won the independent rider award with victories at Brno and Phillip Island and finished seventh in the standings with 141 points. Ducati and Suzuki also won races, with Ducati’s win marking the first non-Yamaha or Honda victory in six years.
The 2016 season set several records. Crutchlow, Jack Miller, Andrea Iannone and Maverick Viñales each won their first MotoGP races, the first time four first-time winners occurred in a season. Between the Italian Grand Prix in May and the San Marino Grand Prix in September, eight riders won eight consecutive races, breaking the previous record of seven. With Andrea Dovizioso’s win in Malaysia, the season had nine different winners, a new record for a single premier-class season. It also marked the first win by a non-factory team since 2006, with Marc VDS (Miller) winning at the Dutch TT and LCR (Crutchlow) winning at the Czech and Australian Grands Prix.
A provisional entry list for 2016 was published on 7 November 2015. All bikes used Michelin tyres. Points were awarded to the top fifteen finishers, and a rider had to finish the race to earn points. Bold indicates pole position, italics indicate fastest lap, and light blue indicates a rookie. Constructors earned points equal to their best-placed rider in each race, and teams’ standings were based on results from regular and substitute riders; wild-card entries were ineligible.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 14:07 (CET).