Francesco Bagnaia eases to pole, title rival Miguel Oliveira crashes

Francesco Bagnaia eased to his fifth pole of the season in qualifying for the Moto2 San Marino Grand Prix, with title rival Miguel Oliveria ninth after a crash.

In typical Moto2 fashion, the early stages of qualifying at Misano was a frantic affair, with top spot continually changing hands in the opening handful of minutes. 

Intact GP's Marcel Schrotter held an advantage of 0.001 seconds as he took over top spot early on with a 1:37.761s, though was soon deposed by Gresini's Jorge Navarro by just over a tenth.

Mattia Pasini relieved the Spaniard of provisional pole moments later with a 1:37.515s, though only briefly, as championship leader Bagnaia began he reign at the top of the timesheets. 

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The Sky VR46 rider eased clear with a 1:37.271s, bettering that on his follow-up tour to a 1:37.121s, which only came under slight threat as the session drew to a close. 

Early pacesetter Schrotter closed Bagnaia's advantage to 0.172s with sic minutes remaining, but had this lap cancelled for exceeding track limits at the final corner. 

With no-one able to make any further advancements on their best laptimes at the sharp end of the field, Bagnaia held onto top spot to claim his fifth pole of the season. 

Schrotter's original laptime of 1:37.293s was still good enough for second, his fourth front row start of the year, while Pasini held onto third in front of his home crowd. 

MotoGP-bound Fabio Quartararo heads up row two on his Speed Up machine, with Brad Binder top KTM runner in fifth ahead of Navarro.

Binder's Ajo teammate Miguel Oliveira will start from ninth after suffering a tumble with 20 minutes remaining at Rio. He was able to rejoin, but was unable to improve on his 1:37.678s. 

Joan Mir shadowed Oliveira in 10th, while Luca Marini and Alex Marquez split the KTM rider from his stablemate. 

A slew of crashes punctuated the closing minutes, with Remy Gardner and Dominique Aegerter coming off, while Lorenzo Baldassarri tumbled twice in the final 10 minutes. Danny Kent and Joe Roberts also fell, both going down early in the session.