Martin was stunned at the Doha GP when he took his first pole in MotoGP and added a second lap on Saturday at the Red Bull Ring and was scrubbed for exceeding the track barriers.
After four missed races due to injuries, the Styrian GP this weekend is only the sixth MotoGP start for Martin.
Fabio Quartararo had a lot of laps in his opening volley and was almost six tenths ahead of Yamaha team-mate Maverick Vinales with 1: 23.259 minutes on his first lap.
The championship leaders then improved to 1: 23.075 minutes to extend their lead, despite the threat of Pramacs Martin on the lap before the Ducati rider made a mistake on the penultimate corner and his time was voided.
After the first rounds in Q2, Quartararo led the Ducati duo Jack Miller and Martin with a 0.225 second lead at the top of the timesheets.
Barely four minutes before the end, Ducati’s Francesco Bagnaia prevailed with 1: 23.038 minutes ahead of Quartararo.
That didn’t last long, however, when Martin lit the timing screens on the first flying lap of his second run to finish the first lap under 1:23 at the Red Bull Ring on a MotoGP motorcycle in 1: 22,994.
Quartararo kept shortening his deficit on Martin on his last flying lap and was 1: 22.958 minutes ahead of Martin.
But the Yamaha rider got out of shape at Turn 9 and left the track limit, causing his lap to be abandoned and him falling back to third place.
Fabio Quartararo, Yamaha Factory Racing
Photo by: Gold and Goose / Motorsport Images
Bagnaia starts from second with his works team Ducati after missing pole by 0.044 seconds, while his team-mate Jack Miller is fourth in the second row.
World champion Joan Mir achieved his best qualifying result of the season in fifth on a GSX-RR that was equipped with the height adjustment device – although a fall in FP4 on this bike almost took the chance of using the new element in Q2.
Johann Zarco completes the second row of the Pramac Ducatis, with Aprilias Aleix Espargaro leading the third row ahead of Marc Marquez after a late fall on Turn 3 for the Honda rider.
Yamaha’s Maverick Vinales was a disappointing ninth after finishing third fastest in FP3, with LCR Honda duo Takaaki Nakagami and Alex Marquez and Miguel Oliveira’s KTM – the latter two coming into Q1 – completing the top 12.
Avintia rookie Enea Bastianini shot to the top of the rankings right at the end of Q1, but was cruelly denied a place in Q2 because the track barriers were exceeded in Turn 8.
Instead, the Italian will start the Sunday race from 20th on the grid, while Suzuki’s Alex Rins was 13th, just a few hundredths behind a Q2 place.
He will start alongside KTM Wildcard Dani Pedrosa, who finished an impressive 14th place in his first qualifying since 2018, while Honda’s Pol Espargaro starts in 15th place.
Brad Binder was almost half a second behind his teammate Oliveira in Q1, but has to start from 16th place ahead of Valentino Rossi from Petronas SRT and his Avintia Ducati-mounted half-brother Luca Marini.
Iker Lecuona was 19th on the Tech3 KTM ahead of Bastianini and Aprilias Lorenzo Savadori, who crashed at Turn 8 at the end of the session.
Danilo Petrucci (Tech3) and SRT deputy Cal Crutchlow on the two-year-old Yamaha completed the field.
MotoGP Grand Prix of Styria – Qualifying Results
Q2 results
Q1 results