Bagnaia beats Martin in MotoGP pole battle in Misano

MotoGP title rivals Pecco Bagnaia and Jorge Martin exchanged blows in the pole duel at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, with Bagnaia ultimately prevailing at the last second.

Martin had taken the Misano lap record from Bagnaia on his first Q2 runs, set at the previous race weekend – the San Marino GP at the same track two weeks ago – but had no answer to Bagnaia's burst of pace at the end of the session, which set a new record of 1m30.031s.

But even two tenths of a second behind, championship leader Martin was closer to Bagnaia than the rest of the field. Bagnaia's Ducati factory teammate Enea Bastianini sneaked into the front row at the last second but was five tenths slower than Bagnaia.

KTM's Brad Binder got through Q1 without any problems and ended up in fourth place on the grid, overtaking his future teammate Pedro Acosta (Tech3 Gas Gas) late on.

VR46 rider Marco Bezzecchi led the Ducati GP23 contingent in sixth place, four hundredths ahead of Gresini's Marc Marquez – who endured a chaotic Saturday morning, crashing in qualifying, then nearly crashing again on his first run in Q2 and also on his second run.

Maverick Vinales led Aprilia's efforts in eighth place, followed by Fabio Quartararo (Yamaha) and Franco Morbidelli (Pramac Ducati) – Morbidelli was seven tenths behind teammate Martin after overtaking him last time out. Morbidelli also inadvertently impeded Martin on his final flying lap, although Martin will have already made the most of his tyres by that point.

Aleix Espargaro (Aprilia) and Binder’s Q1 colleague Miguel Oliveira (Trackhouse Aprilia) completed the Q2 order.

Fabio Di Giannantonio, whose heavy crash on Friday added to his fitness problems as he continues to recover from a lingering injury to his left shoulder, was back on track but ultimately missed out on a Q2 place by a tenth and a half, ending up 13th on the grid.

But the VR46 man wasn't the slowest of the Ducatis. That was Gresini's Alex Marquez, whose miserable weekend continued with a second crash at Turn 1 – this time on his first Q1 run – and no representative time was set on his return to the track.

Raul Fernandez was in 14th place, a quarter of a second behind his Trackhouse teammate Oliveira, followed by Luca Marini, who narrowly won a three-way battle for supremacy at Honda.

Augusto Fernandez used Binder as a reference throughout the session, but crashed at Turn 3 in a final attempt to move up – but still finished ahead of fellow KTM/Gas Gas RC16 rider Jack Miller, four tenths off his Friday position and a long way off in 19th place on the grid.

Alex Rins, whose weekend was severely affected by illness, returned to the track for 13 laps in pre-qualifying practice, but did not really get going and was therefore absent from Q1 altogether.