World Champion Francesco Bagnaia has claimed his first pole position of this MotoGP season.
With a course record of 2:01.892 minutes, the Ducati pilot beat Álex Rins (LCR-Honda/+0.169 seconds) and Luca Marini (VR46-Ducati/+0.289 seconds) in qualifying in Austin.
World Championship leader Marco Bezzecchi had to assert himself in the first qualifying session. He narrowly missed qualifying for Q2 in eleventh place after Friday practice.
In Q1, the VR46 Ducati pilot led the classification for a long time with a time of 2:02.523 minutes, but was finally pushed back from the top by brand colleague Johann Zarco. He drove another 0.136 seconds faster than Bezzecchi. As a runner-up, however, he also subsequently progressed.
In the subsequent second qualifying session, Jorge Martín (Pramac-Ducati) caused an early crash at turn 7. His brand colleague Bagnaia initially moved to provisional pole position, with he and Álex Márquez (Gresini-Ducati) setting exactly the same lap time of 2:02.242 minutes.
Several crashes in qualifying
In the second run, Márquez tried to hang onto Bagnaia’s rear wheel. He swerved and then made a mistake to get rid of Márquez. The Spaniard continued without a draft horse and finally slipped over the front wheel in turn 15.
Bagnaia, who had been pushed off the lead by Rins in the meantime, managed to improve again on the last lap. He reclaimed pole position with a first time under 2:02 minutes on this circuit.
Rins maintained a strong second place on the grid, while Marini finally pushed himself onto the front row of the grid. Álex Márquez was unable to attack after his fall and dropped back to fourth position. Behind them, Bezzecchi lined up in fifth place. Aleix Espargaró (Aprilia) rounded off row two.
Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) finished seventh, followed by Maverick Vinales (Aprilia) and Zarco. Jack Miller (KTM) crashed twice in the course of the Q2 session and was only tenth – ahead of teammate Brad Binder in eleventh. Martín also fell again towards the end and ended up in twelfth place.
Bradl knocked off in Q1
Honda driver Joan Mir in 13th just missed the jump into Q2. He leads the fifth row ahead of Franco Morbidelli (Yamaha) and Miguel Oliveira (RNF-Aprilia). Behind them, Fabio Di Giannantonio (Gresini-Ducati), Takaaki Nakagami (LCR-Honda) and Michele Pirro (Ducati) qualified 16th-18th.
Raúl Fernández (RNF-Aprilia) crashed late in Q1 and qualified 19th, one position ahead of his namesake Augusto Fernández (Tech-3-GasGas) in 20th on the grid.
The two German reserve drivers Stefan Bradl (Honda) and Jonas Folger (Tech-3-GasGas) occupied the last two places in Q1. Bradl was 21st in his qualifying session, one and a half seconds down.