Quartararo's last-second magic seals pole, Miller delights home crowd

The Australian MotoGP™ star has taken the fight to the race favourites by grabbing a front row place in Qualifying for the Liqui Moly Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix 2025.

The Townsville ace snatched third on the grid, just seconds after fellow Yamaha rider Fabio Quartararo took a shock pole position with a time of 1m26.465s. The French star was struggling in 10th position earlier in the session but when the chips were down, he found the speed to reward Yamaha with two bikes on the front row for the first time in four years.

Jack Miller gave his local fans a great start to the day, taking second place early in the first Qualifying session and snipping away at his times. In the end the Pramac Yamaha star was just 0.009s behind the fastest rider, Fermin Aldeguer taking the best time with a 1m27.973s on the Gresini Ducati.

In the second and most important Qualifying session Miller was on the front foot right away before the last-second heroics from Quartararo and the man who split them, Marco Bezzecchi. The Italian and his Aprilia matched his times from Friday Practice, and at the end the gap between the two fastest times was 0.031s.

Miller will be the first Aussie to start on the front row since Casey Stoner in 2012, when the Honda rider went on to a dominant Sunday win.

“It’s unreal,” Miller grinned after the lap.

“I was a bit disappointed how yesterday went, I felt we had great speed from the get-go. But we put our heads down last night and we were able to get the speed out of. We can fight today and tomorrow and it should be a good day.”

Fourth fastest was another Aprilia, Spaniard Raul Fernandez, on the Trackhouse machine, ahead of Pedro Acosta on the factory KTM.

Alex Marquez was sixth fastest but had a crash (his second of the session) immediately after setting his time. Behind him was his Gresini Ducati teammate Aldeguer, Pol Espargaro (Tech3 KTM) and Luca Marini. The Italian was on his second Honda and his preferred race bike suffered an engine failure, while at full speed on Gardner Straight during morning Practice.

Fabio Di Giannantonio was 10th on the VR46 Ducati ahead of the similar factory machine of Francesco Bagnaia. For the third session in a row, the double World Champion rode a single lap on his number one Ducati before parking it, and completed the session on his second GP25.

Brad Binder had a tricky Qualifying session. Apart from missing out on advancing to Q2 by 0.029s, the South African was investigated for not one but two incidents during the session. First he was running slowly on the way to Siberia Corner when he was near-rammed by an at-full speed Aprilia of Lorenzo Savadori, then in the final seconds of the session Binder and his KTM took to the line at The Hayshed, and was nearly taken out by Johann Zarco’s Honda. The Frenchman had to settle for 15th place and Binder was 13th.

This afternoon's 13-lap Sprint is due to start at 3:00pm.