Francesco Bagnaia flew to a second pole of 2021 at Aragon to lead a Ducati 1-2 ahead of Jack Miller and series leader Fabio Quartararo.
The Italian looked to have work to do following the opening runs to try and stop Quartararo, the Frenchman having banged in a 1:47.727s despite losing over three-tenths-of-a-second in the final sector alone due to the lack of power afforded to him by his Yamaha.
Bagnaia still had speed left in reserve though as he began his final run as the seconds ticked down on the session, posting overall-best times in three of the four sectors on his final lap to fire in a 1:47.322s, the fastest ever two-wheeled lap of the Motorland Aragon venue that left his rivals with it all to do on their own respective efforts.
Quartararo saw his challenge fade after failing to find sufficient time across the opening portion of the tour, the points leader taking the chequered flag 0.397s adrift of Bagnaia in second.
His middle front row starting spot was short-lived though as the second factory Desmosedici of Miller streaked across the line to slot in behind his team-mate, albeit 0.366s down.
With a lack of improvers behind this would ultimately decide the front-row starters, Marc Marquez losing out on a top three start by just 0.017s.
Jorge Martin will start fifth for Pramac Ducati ahead of Aprilia’s Aleix Espargaro, while the best Suzuki of reigning series champion Joan Mir was seventh.
The second factory Honda of Pol Espargaro will take the start from eighth on the grid ahead of the impressive Enea Bastinanini, who scored the best qualifying result of his rookie MotoGP campaign so far with ninth ahead of Q1 graduate Johann Zarco.
Takaaki Nakagami failed to capture the magic of his run to pole a year ago en-route to 11th for LCR Honda, while Brad Binder failed to make much progress after joining Zarco in progressing from Q1 down in 12th, albeit as the fastest KTM.
Iker Lecuona was the man to just miss out on Q2, the Tech 3 rider coming within a tenth-and-a-half of knocking out fellow RC16 racer Binder, though 13th is still decent for the Andorran as he just edged the second LCR machine of Alex Marquez and Yamaha’s Cal Crutchlow.
Alex Rins-who won the Aragon GP just a year ago-suffered a horror qualifying session on his way to a lowly 20th, the Spaniard lapping over three tenths adrift of pole shootout gatekeeper Binder, leaving him ahead of only Petronas SRT pair Valentino Rossi and Jake Dixon, the latter only 0.283s down on his illustrious team-mate.
Maverick Vinales meanwhile continued to make progress on his race weekend debut for Aprilia, the nine-time premier class race winner only four-tenths away from Q1 leader Zarco, though he lost all of this time through the final split alone having posted strong times in the opening three sectors, laeving him 19th.
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