Francesco Bagnaia notched up a fifth MotoGP pole position of 2023 at the Red Bull Ring as he shaded Aprilia’s Maverick Vinales by just 0.037s.
As the sun shone down on the picturesque Austrian hills, the 12 riders that took to the track in Q2 had only one thing on their minds – smashing the lap record of the Red Bull Ring to snatch pole position for both of the weekend contests.
Bagnaia kept things clean but fast in the opening part of the session as he ended up second quickest behind Vinales, the latter the only man to breach the 1:29s bracket in the early goings as he looked to keep Aprilia’s strong streak going following its Silverstone success.
Bagnaia though saved his best until the very last moment as he stitched together a stunning 1:28.539s effort – albeit 0.006s adrift of Bezzecchi’s FP2 benchmark and lap record – to secure his fifth pole of the year, with Vinales in the end just coming up short after a messy final portion of the test.
Vinales managed to significantly improve his effort to a 1:28.576s despite running wide and nearly crashing at Turn 4 on his following tour, though this ultimately proved insufficient to hold off Bagnaia’s Ducati.
Vinales still at least salvaged a strong middle-of-the-front row spot just ahead of KTM’s Brad Binder to make it three manufacturers in as many placings, the South African’s team-mate Jack Miller doing well to grab fourth despite having had to progress into the pole shootout from Q1.
Alex Marquez continued to show impressive form in a similar vein to Silverstone to complete the top five for Gresini Ducati.
Having joined Miller in escaping from the opening segment of qualifying, Luca Marini found a nice turn of pace to secure sixth just ahead of VR46 Ducati team-mate Marco Bezzecchi, who struggled to match the trailblazing speed he managed on Friday.
Miguel Oliveira will attempt to back up his top five finish from Silverstone from eighth on the grid for RNF Aprilia just ahead of Fabio Quartararo, the Yamaha rider having sat third half-way through the session before eventually falling to the back-end of the top ten just clear of countryman Johann Zarco.
Aleix Espargaro struggled to find a rhythm in Q2 following a slow-speed crash at Turn 4 early on, the British Grand Prix winner qualifying only 11th ahead of Jorge Martin, who like Espargaro showed speed but failed to put together a decent lap.
The returning Pol Espargaro meanwhile showed encouraging pace to take 13th having narrowly missed out on bumping out Marini to snag a spot in Q2, the GasGas rider just slotting in clear of factory duo Enea Bastianini and Franco Morbidelli for Ducati and Yamaha respectively.
Joan Mir’s year took a small upturn as he qualified as best Honda in 16th ahead of fellow RC213-V riders Marc Marquez and Takaaki Nakagami – who were 18th and 19th – the trio all ahead of Fabio Di Gianantonio, who saw an initially-strong weekend go to waste after a crash during the latter stages of Q1.
