Honda’s Pol Espargaro set the benchmark at 1: 54.775 seconds at the start of the session, but Bagnaia destroyed that with his opening game of 1: 53.273 on his factory Ducati.
Just a moment later, teammate Jack Miller set a new lap record with a time of 1: 53.215 minutes after setting an unofficial lap record two weeks ago in the Qatar test.
Fabio Quartararo increased the game within eight minutes. The factory Yamaha rider moved up to provisional pole position with a time of 1: 53.215 seconds, while team-mate Maverick Vinales completed the front row.
This remained the time until the last minute when Bagnaia began to illuminate the timing screens.
The Italian drove his lap under 1: 53 minutes on the first lap of the Losail circuit with a time of 1: 52.772 minutes and clinched his first MotoGP pole on his Ducati factory debut.
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Quartararo held up in second place while Petronas SRT’s Vinales Valentino Rossi broke his heart on death by jumping to third place in 1: 53.088 seconds to complete the front row.
Rossi shadowed his protégé Bagnaia on his record lap to produce a 1: 53.114-second run. This puts it at the head of the second row in front of the sister factories Ducati from Jack Miller and Johann Zarco from Pramac, which broke the MotoGP speed record of all times in the RP4 when it was clocked at 364.4 km / h.
Zarco’s late improvement put Franco Morbidelli in seventh place on his A-spec SRT M1, while Aleix Espargaro led Alex Rins on the Aprilia Suzuki.
The reigning world champion Mir was only able to achieve 10th place on his GSX-RR after surviving the first quarter together with Takaaki Nakagami, who brought his LCR Honda to 11th place.
Pol Espargaro will start his first race as a factory Honda rider from the 12th.
Avintia newcomer Enea Bastianini finished second as the first quarter ended after briefly taking first place on his two-year-old Ducati.
However, a late improvement for Nakagami meant that the reigning Moto2 world champion dropped to 13th on the grid. Bastianini missed a place in the second quarter on his MotoGP debut by just 0.005 seconds.
Fellow rookie Jorge Martin was also on his way to the top two on his final lap while chasing Nakagami, but the Pramac rider crashed at Turn 12 and was relegated to 14th place.
But Martin still got several big scalps in double race winner Miguel Oliveira, who was KTM’s best rider in 15th place, and double podium finisher Alex Marquez in 16th place on the LCR Honda.
Marc Marquez’s factory Honda replacement Stefan Bradl will start in 17th place ahead of second Avintia rookie Luca Marini, while Brad Binder on his KTM couldn’t do better than 19th place.
The Tech 3 duo Danilo Petrucci and Iker Lecuona as well as Lorenzo Savadori from Aprilia completed the field of 22 drivers.