Lewis Hamilton described qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as “a lot of fun” after securing pole position for tomorrow’s race.
The Brit led a Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport one-two in qualifying at the Yas Marina Circuit as he pipped team-mate Valtteri Bottas to pole by over a tenth of a second.
“What a great way to end the season with a 1-2 qualifying session.
“I’m really proud of everyone at Mercedes, I couldn’t have done this without the support and I’m really proud to be a part of the team.
“If you look at the team’s performance on a race weekend this year – our mechanics, our engineers, our strategists – we’ve all raised our game and we continue to elevate ourselves as a team which is really inspiring to me; it encourages me to go out there and not let them down.”
Hamilton was quick throughout qualifying and felt the car was in the “right window” of performance.
“The qualifying session today was great, it was a lot of fun.
“It went quite smoothly, the team did a really good job in getting the car into the right window.
“It’s always difficult to improve on your last lap, particularly when your first lap in Q3 is pretty good, but I managed to increase the gap.”
The British driver broke his duck of failing to win a race after securing the championship two weeks ago in Brazil and now he wants to finish the season “on a solid high”.
“It’s still a long race tomorrow, there’s a lot of work to do, but I’m really happy with today.
“I want to finish the season on a solid high, so that I can use that foundation to start strong next year.”
