Hamilton: “I hadn't been ahead of the Red Bulls for a long time”

Pole position for Lewis Hamilton at the end of the qualifications of Abu Dhabi GP. A result that fills the driver with pride McLaren.

“I'm very excited, really very excited – declared the British driver -. For the first time in a long time I'm ahead of the Red Bulls and I won't see them in front of me at the start of the race. It's nice, but I know it will be very difficult in the race because they have excellent race pace. I hope we will be strong enough to fight against them."

“The team did a fantastic job all weekend – he continued -. I felt the car was good all weekend, but I don't know why the car works so well here, we haven't made any improvements to the car compared to the last race so I think it's a circuit that allows the car to adapt better . The boys are focused, so I hope tomorrow is a good day for us."

Hamilton believes that McLaren's race pace "should be quite competitive", but admits that the start of the race will be important in terms of victory.

“We had a couple of long runs that looked okay. On one of my long runs I found a lot of traffic, but Jenson instead did better, this shows that like in the last race we should be quite competitive. We are trying to improve the start of the race to do well from the start"he concluded.

Lorenza Teti