A delighted Lewis Hamilton claimed the 17th pole position of his career when he topped the times in a floodlit qualifying session for Sunday's inaugural Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The 24-year-old Englishman, in his McLaren Mercedes, continued the domination he has enjoyed for most of the weekend by clocking a best lap of one minute and 40.948 seconds, with a heavy fuel load, in the top ten shoot-out.

He then immediately made clear he is aiming to finish off an extraordinary season of topsy-turvy results with his 12th career victory.

"It is never easy, even you think so," said Hamilton, who claimed his fourth pole of the season. "But this was definitely as much fun for me as it looked and I believe the car, our car, is the best now it has been all year.

"It feels really great on this circuit and I am comfortable here. It is a pleasure to drive here and the organisers have done a really great job. And my lap was good, but it could have been better, but it was a smooth lap."

Hamilton wound up seven-tenths of a second faster than German Sebastian Vettel, second ahead of Red Bull team-mate Australian Mark Webber.

Vettel said: "I think both Lewis and I were surprised at the gap between us. But Lewis has been strong all weekend and in general McLaren have been strong all weekend.

"We have a button on our steering wheel, called a KERS button, but unfortunately it is not working."

Webber said: "This is a grid that reflects the way things have gone in the second half of the season."

Brazilian veteran Rubens Barrichello, in probably his last race for the Brawn GP team with which he won the constructors championship in Brazil two weeks ago, was fourth fastest ahead of newly-acclaimed champion Briton Jenson Button, his Brawn team-mate.

Button had hoped to be at the front of the grid with a chance of winning.

He said: "Well it is not a satisfactory position for a world champion, no. But, qualifying was really good. The car felt really good. But in Q3, I had massive vibrations. Every time I hit the brakes the steering wheel was shuddering. It's a bit weird. Hopefully we can solve it by the race."

Italian Jarno Trulli was sixth for Toyota, ahead of Pole Robert Kubica for BMW Sauber and his team-mate German Nick Heidfeld. Another German Nico Rosberg was ninth for Williams ahead of 10th placed Swiss Sebastian Buemi, of Toro Rosso, celebrating his 21st birthday.

The first mini-session, Q1, threw up a surprise immediately with the elimination of Ferrari-bound two-times champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso of Renault. Alonso was only 16th quickest and failed to progress to Q2, wrecking his hopes of a decent result in his final race for the Renault team.

Also out with Alonso went Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi of Force India, German Adrian Sutil, his team-mate, Frenchman Romain Grosjean in the second Renault and the luckless Italian veteran Giancarlo Fisichella who was 20th and last for Ferrari in what could be his final appearance for the team.

Fisichella said: "It was a difficult situation being out there with no grip. I was only a tenth slower than Kimi up until the last sector, but then there was a lot of under-steer and the car wouldn't work so unfortunately I didn't get through."

AFP

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