We already saw two Independent Teams claim wins - the first Estrella Galicia 0,0 Marc VDS Honda's Jack Miller at Assen, and LCR Honda's Cal Crutchlow at Brno.
The only rider who was able to get within a half a second of Lorenzo was his Yamaha team-mate Valentino Rossi.
However, once he changed the tyre, he was able to do even better, stopping the clock with a record time of 1.31 " 898, that translates as nearly 2 tenths better than the 1.32:146 the Yamaha rider set on the way to obtaining last year's pole: "I wanted to be immediately aggressive and pushed hard. But during the second free practice Friday afternoon, Espargaro continually went faster, eventually finishing with a best lap of 1:32.769.
Andrea Dovizioso of Ducati team managed to charge into Q2 in P6. "We will try to fight against them tomorrow".
"The rear hard compound has a lot of grip and performed well whilst braking".
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"But in the end I'm happy, the rhythm is really good, we are much closer than we expected before we started the weekend to Yamaha riders".
"We know that it's more hard here than last week, we can see that from Marc and Dani, but we still have some work to do overnight and then I'll do the best job I can".
Andrea Iannone's 2016 season, metaphorically, might as well be an acrobatic plane: it includes the deep, nausea-inducing dives of knocking his teammate down and destroying a chance at an early season 1-2 finish for Ducati, and then punting reigning world champion Jorge Lorenzo off his bike, an incident which left Iannone with a stiff grid penalty at the next race.
The pole at Misano is his 64th in the world championship - taking him one above Marc Marquez (Repsol Honda Team) and Rossi in the record books as the most in GP history.
