Francesco Bagnaia decimated the field to score his first MotoGP pole of 2022, the Italian shattering the two-wheeled lap record at the Spanish venue in the process.
Having led both the preceding FP3 and FP4 sessions on Saturday, Bagnaia immediately continued to show strong speed as he ended up second quickest by the end of the opening runs in Q2 just behind Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo.
Despite hotter track conditions relative to Saturday morning’s FP3 outing, Bagnaia looked to be on for a stunning effort on his final run of the pole shootout having taken a short breather, while Quartararo took his turn in giving Marc Marquez a tow after the Honda man shadowed the 2020 MotoGP vice-champion in the opening runs.
Bagnaia managed to find more and more time as his lap went on to eventually fire in an incredible 1:36.170s, decimating the lap record by over six-tenths-of-a-second and thus leaving Quartararo with a mountain to climb to deny the Ducati pilot.
The reigning MotoGP world champion found himself powerless to challenge Bagnaia and could only muster up a time 0.475s slower for second on the grid ahead of Aleix Espargaro, the Aprilia man once again extracting the most from the RS-GP to complete the front row – albeit 0.763s adrift of Bagnaia’s benchmark.
Jack Miller was fourth on the sister factory Ducati ahead of Marquez, with Q1 graduate Johann Zarco managing sixth on his Pramac Ducati.
Takaaki Nakagami continued his solid weekend to grab seventh on the grid for LCR Honda ahead of Marco Bezzecchi, the VR46 rider also securing top rookie honours as he continues to gather speed in his maiden premier class campaign.
Joan Mir could manage only ninth after crashing towards the end of Q2, while Jorge Martin recovered to complete the top ten after suffering a crash of his own at Turn 1 in the early reaches of the session.
Enea Bastianini and Maverick Vinales completed the 12 man pole shootout line-up, the former crashing on his final effort while the latter once again struggled to string together a no-holds barred qualifying tour.
Pol Espargaro will take the start from 13th after losing out to Bezzecchi in Q1 by a galling 0.003s, the Honda man just heading the second Suzuki of Alex Rins who starts well outside the top ten for second time in as many races.
KTM’s lack of dry weather performance continued to plague the Austrian manufacturer in qualifying as Brad Binder ended up the highest-placed of the RC16 rider’s in 15th, while team-mate Miguel Oliveira was only 21st.
Alex Marquez failed to build upon the strong showing he managed just a week ago in Portimao en-route to 22nd on the grid on the second LCR-run Honda, while Lorenzo Savadori managed to just head RNF Racing Yamaha’s Darryn Binder in the battle to not start last for Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix.
