Abu Dhabi GP: Lewis Hamilton out in Q1 on Mercedes farewell

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Lewis Hamilton will start his final race for Mercedes at the back end of the grid after being eliminated from Q1 in Abu Dhabi.

Hamilton will join Ferrari next season, bringing to an end the most successful team-driver partnership the sport has ever seen.

Hamilton has won six of his seven world titles with Mercedes.

On Saturday, he failed to progress through the opening qualifying segment, finishing down in 18th, 0.093 seconds back. However, he will start Sunday from at least 17th place after Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc was handed a 10-place grid penalty.

After his lap, Hamilton said: “Yeah, I messed that up big time guys.”

Race engineer Peter Bonnington replied: “Yeah sorry about that Lewis, that was a big balls up.”

Hamilton said afterwards: “Every day and more than ever I’ve just tried to be really present … just trying to take it in because it’s the last time we will be racing and driving in Silver Arrows and it’s all my wins, all my success through my life so every moment is a special moment.

“I would have loved to get a podium for the guys this weekend and it just didn’t work out.”

The end of Q1 was bizarre, with several cars all fighting over a small amount of space on the race track.

At one stage, Kevin Magnussen had intentionally missed the apex in order to get out of the way, but in doing so knocked a bollard off the corner and into the road.

Hamilton drove over the bollard as he rounded the corner and replays showed him driving into another corner with it stuck underneath his car.

It was unclear whether Hamilton started his final lap with the bollard still there, but even if it compromised some of his preparation lap he may feel it cost him a spot in Q2.

“You couldn’t make it up, you really couldn’t, but it is what it is. We gave it everything, I gave it everything, the car was in a good place,” Hamilton said.

“Every practice session went well, I was ahead of my team-mate all weekend but when we got to qualifying I think as a team we didn’t perform in terms of the timing.

“I was the last car on track and ran out of time ultimately, and then I got the bollard at the end which went under the car and I lost all downforce so it couldn’t have gone worse really.”

When asked how he will feel waking up in the morning, knowing this will be his final race with the team, Hamilton said: “It’ll be like I made it. I survived a very, very hardcore year.

“Although I’m going to be sad not to be racing any more this year, but hopefully next year comes around soon enough. Just going to miss all these people that I got to work with.”