Maverick Vinales shot to a dominant pole position for the Australian GP at Phillip Island, the Spaniard posting three times fast enough for his third pole of the season.
Vinales-who has looked the man to beat come rain or shine throughout the weekend- immediately shot to the head of the times as the first flying runs of Q2 came to a close, the Yamaha pilot managing a 1:28.736 to put him three-tenths clear of Fabio Quartararo.
He then went on to post three consecutive improvements on his final run on a new set of soft compound tyres-all quicker than anyone else could manage across the shootout.
A 1:28.492 ended up as Vinales pole benchmark, a massive 0.551 quicker than second placed Quartararo who had to progress through Q1 due to his lack of Friday running.
The SRT Petronas rider dominated the session, going 0.606 quicker than anyone else to easily claim his ticket for the final part of qualifying.
He was joined in Q2-somewhat surprisingly-by Aprilia’s Andrea Iannone, who used the M1 as a yardstick to pip Suzuki’s Joan Mir to second in the session.
This forced Mir to settle for a 13th place starting position for the race just ahead of impressive LCR Honda debutant Johann Zarco, who will take off from 14th ahead of all three competing KTM’s, as well as posting a best effort 1.2 seconds faster than factory Honda man Jorge Lorenzo in a lowly 19th.
Marc Marquez meanwhile will start third having been unable to get near the two leading Yamaha’s ahead of an encouraging Valentino Rossi in fourth, while Danilo Petrucci was the last rider to get within a second of Vinales to lead the Ducati contingent and round out the top five.
Cal Crutchlow was a solid sixth for LCR to pip the two RS-GP Aprilia’s of Aleix Epsargaro and Andrea Iannone in seventh and eighth respectively-collectively the best qualifying effort for the Italian manufacturer this year.
Home hero Jack Miller was a rather disappointing ninth for Pramac Racing, albeit ahead of the second factory Ducati GP19 of Andrea Dovizioso who closed out the top ten.
Franco Morbidelli and Alex Rins completed the 12 Q2 runners ahead of the race in just a few hours time.
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