Marc Marquez maintained his grip on proceedings ahead of the Aragon MotoGP after turning it on when it mattered to claim pole position on home soil at Motorland Aragon.
The Spaniard recovered from a botched lap towards the end of the session to respond emphatically to threats from both Alex Marquez and Franco Morbidelli with a 1m 45.704secs.
Finding his two tenth margin over his brother almost entirely in the final sector, it is Marquez’s fourth pole position of the season, albeit his first since Qatar.
Having dominated each practice session coming into qualifying, one might have assumed Marquez would steamroll his way to the top spot.
However, he pushed closely for much of Q2 by his brother Alex, the younger of the siblings bouncing back with interest having crashed at Turn 7 in the preceding FP2 session.
With Morbidelli also getting in the mix, the trio found themselves separated by just 0.022secs with just a few seconds remaining on the clock.
Nevertheless, Marquez - having been forced to abandon the first lap of his final run following a mistake - got his head down to find another two tenths for pole.
Another Marquez 1-2 in front of their adoring home fans, they will be joined on the front row by Morbidelli, who scored his first top three qualifying result of the season.
Pecco Bagnaia made it a Ducati 1-2-3-4 but will be humbled by the vast 0.6s gap to team-mate Marquez out front.
Having caused a stir with its upturn in form on Friday, KTM enjoyed its best qualifying performance of the season as a manufacturer with Pedro Acosta, Brad Binder and Maverick Vinales sealing fifth, sixth and eighth on the grid. The trio were split by Fermin Aldeguer in seventh place on the second of the Gresini bikes.
While his hopes of a fourth straight pole position always seemed unlikely by virtue of him having to come through Q1, Fabio Quartararo at least looked more competitive on Saturday morning as he rounded out row three in ninth.
Fabio di Giannantonio joined Quartararo in progressing from Q1 en route to tenth, while Honda’s hopes of building on his fine Friday form fell flat as Joan Mir - who also crashed in FP2 - and Johann Zarco settled for 11th and 12th respectively.
Beyond the front four rows, Marco Bezzecchi went from hero to zero as the British MotoGP race winner scuppered his hopes with a crash early on in Q1.
The Italian found himself skating through the gravel at Turn 3 on his first flying lap, forcing him to sprint back to the pit-lane for a swap to his spare Aprilia.
However, upon returning to the track, Bezzecchi was soon touring with a suspected technical issue and subsequently returned to the pits. While he was sent back out a couple of minutes later in an effort to salvage a better grid position, he could only manage a time good enough for 20th on the grid.
With the factory Aprilias towards the back, it was up to Raul Fernandez to fly the flag for the Noale marque on the sole Trackhouse Racing machine, the Spaniard starting 13th, ahead of Jack Miller and Alex Rins.
- Ollie Barstow
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