There was hardly a vintage victory battle in either of the Indonesian Grand Prix weekend's two MotoGP races - but when it came to deciding #1 in these rankings, it was a much closer affair.
Take a look at Val's ruling below - then quiz him about it in the comments on this post in The Race Members' Club and he'll reply in his Q&A recording later this week.
Qualifying: 9th Sprint: 6th Grand Prix: 5th
Normal service resumed - Acosta was the fastest KTM in every session here, usually by the better part of a second.
He was one of three riders I seriously considered for the top spot here, and all three had something going against them, but Acosta's weekend ultimately felt least impeachable.
In a "bad" qualifying he still put together his best sectors, and the track limits long-lap penalty in the sprint was perfectly forgivable given he still kept himself in the top six.
He and KTM must've pushed the tyre-pressure limit a little too much on Sunday, but that was largely mitigated by the rider, who after this 15-point weekend has 15 points more this season than all of his KTM peers combined.
Qualifying: 1st Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 2nd
Noted by his Aprilia peers as a standout on Friday, Fernandez lived up to the hype in Q2 before the start of the sprint changed the trajectory of his weekend.
A straight fight with Bezzecchi and the others would have been interesting to see, on both days, but ultimately the grand prix ride could prove more additive to his lore - with fractures to the index and pinky finger forcing him and Trackhouse to improvise a new braking style on Sunday morning that held up remarkably well in the race.
He can't carry any of the blame for the sprint crash, with the caveat that a better start would have kept him out of the firing line and perhaps on course for a 37-point weekend.
Qualifying: 12th Sprint: 9th Grand Prix: 9th
Save for an underwhelming qualifying - for a change - Quartararo was superb yet again, with no sign of the checked-out approach of Mugello and Misano.
He took a big hit in his crash on Friday, and didn't really look to have that same decisive edge of pace over the other Yamahas this weekend, but outshone them handily in execution, particularly with a very strong Sunday grand prix.
Qualifying: 4th Sprint: 1st Grand Prix: 6th
Marquez's weekend only seemed to grow in my estimation the closer I looked, his advantage over the other Ducatis razor-thin but admirably consistent.
Sixth on Sunday is a poor return in the title picture but is more than offset by the sprint triumph.
As Marquez himself said, he would've heartily accepted, coming into the weekend, just three points ceded to Bezzecchi and the status quo maintained against Martin (both scoring 22).
Qualifying: 2nd Sprint: DNF Grand Prix: 1st
A first win since May is cause for celebration - but Bezzecchi needed a little more from Mandalika to meaningfully influence his title chances, with a mere three-point gain on Marquez and Martin not enough at a track like this.
The crash at the start of the sprint was the big missed opportunity - and while he is not really culpable for the incident, I am sympathetic to the gist of Fernandez's argument: that Bezzecchi miscalculated by choosing to crowd him out to the outside and opening the door to the two Ducatis for that catastrophic four-wide.
Sunday was an open goal, given Fernandez's injury, and Bezzecchi got the job done with minimal fuss or doubt.
Qualifying: 5th Sprint: 4th Grand Prix: 3rd
For once Martin started the weekend pretty well - but he never made that step, and never looked like anything but the third-best of the Aprilias.
If not for a tyre-pressure misadventure in the sprint, that would still have been a significant points yield and a considerable gain over main rival Marquez. As it stands, there's a slight tinge of disappointment to the weekend - as the final laps of the sprint represented a nine-point swing in the title battle.
Martin suggested his crew was quite conservative in the tyre pressure setting for Sunday, which maybe correlated with a slightly timid beginning to his race, though ultimately did nothing to stop him from advancing into the podium places.
Qualifying: 3rd Sprint: 3rd Grand Prix: 8th
Di Giannantonio showed really good performance through most of the weekend - 0.004s off being the fastest Ducati on Friday, fastest Ducati in Q2, right there for the sprint win after an accidental downshift triggered, seemingly, by Marquez's knee in the Turn 1 melee.
He was absolutely nowhere in the main race, but claimed his front tyre stopped working around the 10-lap mark - and that he'd discovered a big "hole" in the rubber afterwards that meant he had been lucky to finish.
It's the kind of thing a rider can influence, or not, but Di Giannantonio does deserve the benefit of the doubt on the basis of the weekend.
Qualifying: 8th Sprint: 5th Grand Prix: 7th
Mandalika feels like it should be much more of an Alex Marquez track, but he was fairly anonymous again in the grand scheme of Ducati performance here.
The word 'anonymous', though, is a bit value-neutral here. He didn't have the performance of his brother, but unlike some of his peers was firmly in acceptable range, as reflected by the qualifying gap of 0.338s and the two acceptable results.
Qualifying: 7th Sprint: 2nd Grand Prix: 4th
Ogura was the fourth of four Aprilias by some margin, but this isn't obvious from his weekend's very healthy points yield.
He was unlucky with yellow flags on Friday but also knocked his confidence with crashes going into Q2, and needed a fair bit of help to end up on the podium in the sprint.
He propped up the Aprilia 1-2-3-4 on Sunday but felt this was the best position available as it was "clear to see I was the slowest Aprilia again". The culprit this weekend? The tighter corners, which he admitted his peers were getting much more out of.
Qualifying: 15th Sprint: 15th Grand Prix: 12th
After the Motegi uptick for Honda (which did largely bypass Marini), the RC213Vs were frankly woeful - with Martini's charge in the early laps on Sunday the only thing even resembling a bright spot.
That never lasted, as edge grip dissipated and a ninth place turned into 12th - which was still the joint-best any Honda managed in any session this weekend.
Qualifying: 13th Sprint: 10th Grand Prix: 15th
The corner speed-y, low-grip confines of Mandalika are a natural fit for Rins, and so it looked through the first two days of the weekend - as he was on the edge of Q2 two times and rode a solid sprint despite being boxed in a little on the opening lap.
He suspected track conditions got away from him on Sunday, though, with a "really bad feeling" in the race and an 11-second deficit to Quartararo that hadn't looked on the cards.
A mention, too, of a very particular exchange with a marshal on Friday after crashing - with the marshal, according to Rins, refusing to bring him back to the garage, which led to an excessive outburst from Rins (though he was understandably on edge in that moment).
Qualifying: 14th Sprint: 11th Grand Prix: 10th
Bastianini followed up his excellent Japanese GP by crashing three times in the first four sessions of the weekend.
Normally this would suggest something much worse than the fifth row of the grid, and so he was able to have a reasonably productive weekend - certainly by the standards of the non-Acosta KTMs - despite the initial crashfest.
But he wasn't particularly happy in the end, with the bike proving too unstable in the slipstream of others on Sunday - something that left Bastianini worried for the windy Phillip Island.
Qualifying: 20th Sprint: 12th Grand Prix: 13th
Zarco gained a total of 14 positions relative to his grid slot in the two races - which is pretty nice but also the kind of thing that happens when you crash twice in Q1 and start nowhere.
He chose the medium for the sprint to prepare for the Sunday race, but felt he had to ride very cautiously in the grand prix - and hadn't replicated Marini's spectacular start.
The degradation on the rear was such he feared he was nursing a rear puncture at the end.
Qualifying: 6th Sprint: 7th Grand Prix: DNF
'Competitive but all over the place' is the description of Aldeguer's weekend but also the story of his season - as is suffering yet another injury, this time a right hand fracture.
Sixth on the grid despite shunting three times by that point of the weekend, he opted to play it safe in the sprint but clearly flicked into an extra gear for Sunday in pursuit of a podium to go with his win from last year.
He instead fell off after clearing Martin and Di Giannantonio, and will now need to undergo hand surgery in Barcelona.
Qualifying: 16th Sprint: 16th Grand Prix: 11th
Binder hit misfortune with traffic and yellow flags on Friday, but the underlying speed always suggested his weekend was going nowhere fast, and so it ended up.
After an understeer-ravaged sprint, he found the KTM more compliant in the grand prix - probably helped by less grip from the rear - but still just didn't quite have the optimal performance late on, beaten by Bastianini in a straight fight but negating the position loss thanks to Marini's drop.
Qualifying: 10th Sprint: 8th Grand Prix: DNF
Bagnaia is now on five DNFs in the last eight grands prix, and averaging a terrible 4.9 points per round since his mini-breakthrough at Brno. He and the bike have effectively given up on each other.
A mildly promising Friday here, as he snuck into Q2, wasn't really built upon - in Q2 he did the exact same laptime as in Friday's 'Q0', and so four other Ducati riders beat him (and again in the sprint).
He was trying to catch ninth-placed Marini in the grand prix - which would have happened as the Hondas were so poor - in order to raise his tyre pressure, but crashed in pursuit.
Qualifying: 18th Sprint: 18th Grand Prix: 17th
The Motegi-to-Mandalika back-to-back clearly proved a little too taxing for Vinales, who wasn't competitive, save for maybe the sprint.
Vinales says he expects to be at 95%, if not necessarily 100%, at some point, but is currently still around 70% of his fitness.
And the full weekend schedule is still just too difficult - which meant he was totally spent by the time Sunday rolled around, and barely participated in the grand prix in any meaningful sense.
Qualifying: 21st Sprint: 17th Grand Prix: 16th
Bewildered by the front feeling, Moreira crashed in FP1, Friday practice and Q1 and decided that was enough.
He went into 'safe mode' for the rest of the weekend, taking it easy for two bad finishes but no broken bones.
Qualifying: 22nd Sprint: 20th Grand Prix: DNS
Espargaro's appearance on the bike at Mandalika was a true 'break glass in case of emergency' situation for Honda - with Joan Mir not ready to return yet and no option to reuse previous stand-ins Taka Nakagami (injured) and Somkiat Chantra (busy in World Superbike).
Both Nakagami and Chantra had done excellently as substitute riders, but this wasn't really on the cards for Espargaro, who's barely ridden since suffering a bad back injury in testing in April - and needs to be kept fresh for Honda 850cc testing purposes this week at Sepang.
Though he wasn't horribly slow here, after he had a (fairly innocuous) crash on Saturday morning and had to cruise to the finish of the sprint while battling arm pump, it was no surprise that Honda withdrew him from Sunday's action.
Qualifying: 11th Sprint: 14th Grand Prix: 14th
A rock-solid Friday to get into Q2 ultimately made next to no difference to Morbidelli's weekend - because he was 14th after the start in the sprint, and 17th after the start in the main race.
So both races were more or less a write-off, though Morbidelli was at least pleased to show some reasonable used-tyre pace. But that just isn't a winning formula.
Qualifying: 19th Sprint: 19th Grand Prix: DNF
Razgatlioglu ended up "really sad for this weekend" - but will hope that its significance will be limited to just a lost opportunity at Mandalika.
He was stronger on Friday than in a long while but dislocated his shoulder in a Saturday morning highside.
The rest of that day was perhaps competitive given that injury, but the shoulder took a turn for the worse on Sunday - and, after parking up from the grand prix, Razgatlioglu is set for an MRI next week to see if there's more damage and/or cause for surgical intervention.
Qualifying: 17th Sprint: 13th Grand Prix: DNF
Miller's extremely dodgy recent run of form continued here despite a relatively strong run through Friday.
He went down in Q1, pushing too hard by his own admission, then was held up in the sprint by the troubled Hondas.
Come the Sunday GP he found an "almost unrideable" M1, overconsuming fuel and with a lean map that compromises engine braking, and so quickly went down from 17th.