Di Giannantonio grabs surprise Brazil MotoGP pole in mad qualifying
VR46 Ducati rider Fabio Di Giannantonio took pole position for the Brazilian Grand Prix at Goiania, in a crash-filled MotoGP qualifying.
Di Giannantonio and Marco Bezzecchi had progressed through Q1 and were then quickest in the pole shootout, which was continuously disrupted by yellow flags.
The 30-minute practice before qualifying marked the MotoGP field's first meaningful dry running at the returning Goiania track, and it already featured numerous falls.
Riders were being caught out at a variety of corners, through the long Turn 4 right-hander - which had already tripped up three riders on Friday in the went - proved the most problematic.
Di Giannantonio was among those to crash there. But he had already set the fastest time on his first Q2 run, then improved slightly before crashing.
Bezzecchi and Marc Marquez - who also crashed at Turn 4 - completed a front row covered by 0.081s.
A monumental effort by Fabio Quartararo on the V4-engined Yamaha returned a fourth-place grid slot, a round after none of the new M1s came anywhere near making Q2.
Quartararo was 0.151s down on pole - having lost more than twice that in the final two sectors - but was seven hundredths up on Jorge Martin (Aprilia), who also crashed.
Last year's rookies Ai Ogura and Fermin Aldeguer took sixth and seventh, Aldeguer narrowly outqualifying Gresini team-mate Alex Marquez despite still being barely able to walk due to his femur fracture from January.
Pedro Acosta (KTM), Johann Zarco (LCR Honda), Pecco Bagnaia (Ducati) and Toprak Razgatlioglu (Pramac Yamaha) completed the Q2 order. Acosta and Bagnaia had crashed on their first Q2 runs and struggled to salvage their sessions.
1 Di Giannantonio 2 Bezzecchi 3 M Marquez
4 Quartararo 5 Martin 6 Ogura
7 Aldeguer 8 A Marquez 9 Acosta
10 Zarco 11 Bagnaia 12 Razgatlioglu
13 Mir 14 Moreira 15 Morbidelli
16 Fernandez 17 Rins 18 Miller
19 Marini 20 Vinales 21 Binder
22 Bastianini
Honda pair Joan Mir and Diogo Moreira built their Q1 strategy around following Bezzecchi but could only pick up 13th and 14th respectively, ahead of Franco Morbidelli as Ducati's sole Q2 absentee and Raul Fernandez as his Aprilia counterpart.
Jack Miller (Pramac Yamaha) and Luca Marini (Honda) both crashed in Q1 - Marini's crash coming after he already wrote off one bike in the preceding practice - but did end up ahead of KTM's three Q1 participants.
