Fabio di Giannantonio edged out Marco Bezzecchi in the final minutes of qualifying to score his second consecutive pole position of the 2026 MotoGP season at the United States Grand Prix .
Di Giannantonio set a best time of 2m00.136s aboard the VR46 Ducati with just over a minute remaining in Q2, a lap seven tenths under the previous record at Austin.
KTM’s Pedro Acosta secured the final spot on the front row, while factory Ducati rider Francesco Bagnaia jumped to fourth at the end, ahead of Honda’s Joan Mir and team-mate Marc Marquez.
Bagnaia was the first rider to break Maverick Vinales’ record at the Circuit of the Americas, lapping the track in 2m00.815s in the first five minutes to move to the top of the leaderboard.
Joan Mir then took the entire field by surprise, going nearly a quarter of a second quicker than Bagnaia aboard the factory Honda – despite the RC213V’s persistent grip issues in qualifying.
Di Giannantonio held third place after the first runs, while Bezzecchi was fourth fastest.
Reigning world champion Marquez languished in 10th place after the first half of the session, having been forced to abort his flying lap after catching Bezzecchi at the end of the back straight. The incident remains under investigation.
Lap times tumbled rapidly as riders returned on track with fresh soft tyres, with Bezzecchi posting a 2m00.329s to become the first rider to go faster than Mir.
However, the Aprilia rider’s position at the top of the timesheets proved to be short-lived, with di Giannantonio snatching pole position just seconds after. This marked only the third time the VR46 rider has topped a qualifying session, after his previous poles at Mugello in 2022 and Goiania last weekend.
Championship leader Bezzecchi held on to second place aboard the lead Aprilia, while Acosta shot up to third for KTM at the death of the session.
Bagnaia also managed to find a late improvement to qualify fourth, just beating an impressive Mir, while Marquez could only manage sixth at one of his favourite venues.
Aprilia’s Jorge Martin ended up seventh ahead of Gresini Ducati’s Alex Marquez, while Luca Marini (Honda) and Fermin Aldeguer (Gresini) rounded out the top 10. Both Mir and Aldeguer had made their way into the session after going through Q1.
Ai Ogura could only muster 11th aboard the Trackhouse Aprilia after crashing twice in FP2 ahead of qualifying, while Enea Bastianini wound up 12th for Tech3 KTM.
Bastianini was visibly agitated after feeling he was held up by Marc Marquez at the end of qualifying. The incident will also be investigated after qualifying.
Trackhouse rider Raul Fernandez was eliminated in Q1 for the second weekend in succession, although this time he missed the Q2 cut by just 0.018s to end up 13th.
Diogo Moreira beat his more experienced LCR team-mate Johann Zarco to 14th in qualifying, while Yamaha’s Fabio Quartararo wound up 16th after suffering a low-speed crash at Turn 15 on his first run.
Pramac duo Toprak Razgatlioglu and Jack Miller qualified 17th and 19th respectively, separated by the factory KTM of Brad Binder.
Franco Morbidelli endured another difficult qualifying session on the VR46 Ducati to finish 20th, while Alex Rins, a two-time MotoGP winner at Austin, propped up the timesheets on the factory Yamaha.
Q2 results:
Q1 results:
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– The Autosport.com Team
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