Jorge Martin claimed his ninth Moto3 pole of the season in Moto3, as he looks to brush off his Motegi disaster and take charge of the World Championship, with title rival Marco Bezzecchi down in fifteenth, after a testing qualifying session at Phillip Island.

With the track still green from morning rain, the field eased into the qualifying session, aware of the risks involved. However, going into the final ten minutes, Martin started to turn up the heat.

Despite doing the majority of his laps coming on his own, Martin was the beneficiary of a late slipstream from Jakub Kornfeil to do a 1:36.591 on his final lap, which was good enough to take pole by over a quarter of a second.

Darryn Binder will start from the middle of the front row after stringing an impressive run of laps together at the end of the session and just managed to hold off Ayumu Sasaki who was following the South African around.

Jakub Kornfeil will start from the head of the second row with Gabi Rodrgio in fifth and mid session leader Phillipp Oettl rounding out the second row. Tony Arbolino will start from seventh and be joined on the third row by Marcos Ramirez and Dennis Foggia, who will start from eighth and ninth respectively.

Title challenger Bezzecchi and his Redox PruestelGP team seemed to suffer a tactical blunder with the Italian wasting time on rain tyres, before putting fresh rubber on with just less than fifteen minutes to go.

Rather than coming in and getting a fresh set for the final, Bezzecchi stayed on his used tyres until the end and will have to start from the back of the fifth row as a result.