The Spaniard has never been on the podium in a 250cc race in Portugal, but showed no signs of discomfort with the Estoril circuit as he put in a 1min 40.480secs lap nearly a full second quicker than Roberto Locatelli's pole record from 2006.
The provisional first two rows would all have taken pole any other year, but the closest to Lorenzo on this occasion was his title rival
Andrea Dovizioso, over four tenths of a second slower than the factory Aprilia rider.
The KTM duo of Mika Kallio and Hiroshi Aoyama made up the front row featuring all three major factories, followed on the provisional second row by morning crasher Alvaro Bautista, title contender
Alex de Angelis and the Spanish duo of Julian Simon and Hector Barbera.
First qualifying – Estoril:
1. Lorenzo (Aprilia)
2. Dovizioso (Honda) +0.344secs
3. Kallio (KTM) +0.413secs
4. H. Aoyama (KTM) +0.583secs
5. Bautista (Aprilia) +0.858secs
6. de Angelis (Aprilia) +0.943secs
7. Luthi (Aprilia) +0.975secs
8. Simon (Honda) +1.025secs
9. Barbera (Aprilia) +1.172secs
10. Takahashi (Honda) +1.191secs
23. Laverty (Honda) +4.127secs
24. Linfoot (Aprilia) +4.405secs
DNQ Lawrence (Aprilia) +8.985secs
