Nine finishers score points in a MotoGP sprint race.
The sprint scoring scale awards points from first through ninth place: 12, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1. A rider must finish the sprint to receive points, so simply starting the race is not enough. The system was introduced with MotoGP’s sprint format in 2023.
The sprint scale is deliberately shorter than the Sunday Grand Prix scoring system, which awards points to the top 15 finishers. First place in the main race earns 25 points, while first in the sprint earns 12, making the longer race more valuable even though both affect the championship.
The number nine can be easy to confuse with 10 or 15 because those figures appear in other racing systems and in MotoGP’s full-race classification. Sprint results can also show more than nine riders finishing, but only the first nine receive championship points.