Maverick Vinales flew to the opening pole position of 2019 after a stunning qualifying performance saw him take pole position two tenths of a second ahead of Andrea Dovizioso and Marc Marquez.
Consistently finding himself at the sharp end in every session through the weekend, the Monster Energy Factory Yamaha man went out on track on his own, unconcerned with others who spent time looking for a tow.
Vinales posted the fastest lap after the initial runs, before going back out on his M1 on fresh soft tyres to improve further. The Spaniard continued to lap quicker, before eventually posting his fastest time of a 1:53.546.
Dovizioso left it late to jump into the middle of the front row on his factory Ducati, just 0.198 seconds behind that of Vinales and just 0.001 seconds ahead of his great title rival Marquez, with the three title favourites all on the front row of the grid.
Jack Miller will start from fourth position despite a heavy fall at turn two which he was lucky to walk away from, just ahead of the star of the session Fabio Quartararo. The French rookie found himself on a provisional front row with just two minutes left in the session, only to see the factory Ducati and Honda men push him down to the middle of the second row. Despite being pushed off of the front row, the rookie will be delighted to find himself just 0.400 off the pole position.
Cal Crutchlow topped Q1 and consolidated with a strong performance to round out the second row on his LCR Honda.
Danilo Petrucci will be disappointed to only managed seventh on his factory Ducati, just ahead of his compatriot Franco Morbidelli with the second Q2 graduate Taka Nakagami rounding out the third row on the grid.
Suzuki factory duo of Alex Rins and Joan Mir were in tenths and eleventh respectively with Aleix Espargaro completing the Q2 participants in twelfth position.
Pecco Bagnaia will start from thirteenth in his first MotoGP race and will be joined on the fifth row by 10 MotoGP World Championships with Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo in fourteenth and fifteenth respectively. Lorenzo crashed out of Q1 with a little over four minutes remaining at turn two, before pointing to the sky, suggesting the dew had started falling, further pushing his request to move the start time forward an hour.
