Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia took a vital pole position in Barcelona MotoGP to qualify ahead of championship rival Jorge Martin.
Bagnaia’s time of 1:38.641 was enough to earn an important pole position as he will start both races in front of Martin, who could only muster fourth.
There was a chaotic start to the Q2 session as the riders filtered out onto the track in a pack in attempts to get a tow, which resulted in Marc Marquez almost running into Bagnaia’s bike on the pitlane exit.
The Ducati rider was unfazed and set the early pace, immediately heading to the top of the timesheets after setting the benchmark time of 1:38.835.
Marquez followed the double reigning champion around the Barcelona circuit to get a tow, which saw him into second place, splitting the championship rivals as Martin moved into third.
The final flying laps came in and Bagnaia was being pursued by Marquez and Morbidelli in their attempts to improve their lap times.
Bagnaia saw an improvement on his early lap, and set a 1:38.641 to keep a firm hold on his provisional pole position, with Marquez and Morbidelli staking strong claims to the front row behind him.
Aleix Espargaro was giving a tow to Martin and Pedro Acosta as they seeked to improve on their own times and challenge Bagnaia at the top.
Espargaro moved into second, but his improvement pushed Martin off of the front row and down into fourth.
Bagnaia took arguably his most important pole position of the season and will have the advantage over Martin in both races.
Espargaro took second in his final MotoGP qualifying session in front of an adoring home crowd in Catalonia.
Marquez took a surprising third after struggling across the weekend as he could prove to be a decisive character in the championship fight.
Martin will start directly behind Bagnaia on the second row in fourth, ahead of teammate Morbidelli in fifth and Acosta in sixth.
Maverick Vinales could only take seventh and will start in front of Enea Bastianini in eighth and Marco Bezzecchi in ninth.
Fabio Quartararo will lead the fourth row of the grid after qualifying in 10th as Alex Marquez recovered from an early crash to 11th, while Johann Zarco finished 12th.
Joan Mir narrowly missed out on a Q2 appearance and will head the fifth row of the grid in 13th ahead of Miguel Oliveira in 14th and Alex Rins in 15th.
Luca Marini finished the session in 16th after a decent showing for Repsol Honda, with Raul Fernandez ending qualifying in 17th.
A difficult session for KTM saw Brad Binder down in 18th while teammate Jack Miller crashed at the end of Q1 and was unable to improve on 19th.
Takaaki Nakagami was unable to put a competitive lap time together and finished qualifying in 20th ahead of Augusto Fernandez in 21st.
Michele Pirro finished the qualifying session in 22nd while Stefan Bradl completed the standings in 23rd.
