Lewis Hamilton made up half a second on his first flying lap to claim his 83rd career pole at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
In the face of stiff competition from Ferrari and Red Bull, the Briton turned it up both in Q2 and Q3, posting a new lap record of 1m34.794s as Mercedes locked out the front row once again.
Valtteri Bottas was a tenth-and-a-half shy of repeating his result from 12 months ago but will still have a good platform from P2 albeit with the two Ferrari’s right behind as Sebastian Vettel led teammate Kimi Raikkonen.
Daniel Ricciardo continued his run of never being out-qualified at Yas Marina in fifth ahead of Max Verstappen as Red Bull’s straight-line speed again proved the Achilles heel.
The Dutchman had a late scare to make the top-10 shootout at all as he was only the only top six driver who had to use the Hypersoft tyre to ensure progression, while the rest will all start on the more durable Ultrasoft.
In the midfield, Romain Grosjean set the bar with a great first lap in Q3 and held onto seventh as Charles Leclerc came up 0.04s shy in the Sauber.
Esteban Ocon showed Force India what they’ll be missing next season with an impressive ninth as Nico Hulkenberg made it four different teams in the final four places in 10th for Renault.
The German’s teammate Carlos Sainz just missed out in 11th ahead of Marcus Ericsson’s Sauber with Kevin Magnussen a disappointing 13th in the Haas, 1.2 seconds slower than his teammate.
Sergio Perez was 14th as Fernando Alonso produced a great effort to make Q2 but could do no better than 15th on the grid for his final race in the McLaren.
His lap dropped the two Toro Rosso’s in the knockout zone with Pierre Gasly ahead of teammate Brendon Hartley.
The Spaniard also secured a 21-0 record over Stoffel Vandoorne in qualifying this season as the Belgian was only 18th.
Williams brought up the field on the back row with Sergey Sirotkin beating Lance Stroll by just 0.047s.
A full look at the times from the final qualifying of the year can be seen below:
