• Brazilian Grand Prix - Qualifying

Hamilton 'grateful' to McLaren for pole

Lewis Hamilton took his 26th pole position with McLaren at Interlagos © Press Association

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• Report:
• Hamilton leads McLaren front row, Vettel fourth and Alonso seventh
  

• Race:
• Brazilian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Lewis Hamilton

• Teams:
• McLaren

Lewis Hamilton said that he was "grateful" to McLaren for having a quick enough car to take pole position at his final race for the team.

Having taken pole position in Abu Dhabi and won the race in Austin, Hamilton continued his strong run of form at the end of the season with pole at Interlagos. It gives him the best opportunity to end his time with the team with back-to-back victories and Hamilton said he was pleased to head a front-row lockout but wary that the race could be "more of a lottery" with rain forecast.

"It's been a good weekend so far, I'm grateful to be able to put the car on the front row and to have my last one-two qualifying with Jenson [Button] in the same team," Hamilton said. "A fantastic job by the team and I'm so grateful for all the opportunities they have given me; I hope that we can turn it in to something really positive tomorrow.

"I think the weather's going to be tricky tomorrow so it's definitely going to make it more of a lottery. I think we've put ourselves in a really good position and we're just going to do the best job we can from there and work together as a team the best we have for quite some time so we'll make sure that we do absolutely everything to get the top result."

Hamilton admitted it would be a special victory if he could win at Interlagos as it's one of the circuits he is yet to win at.

"Brazil is a very special, historic track. We've got Silverstone, we've got Monza, we've got Monaco, all the great historical circuits and I've won at a lot of them but this is one of those I haven't won. It took Ayrton [Senna] I think eight races to win here - at least that's what I was told - and I would like to do that at some stage as well. I've put myself in the best position possible and I'm so grateful I could do that with Jenson up front, get our last one-two together in qualifying; I hope tomorrow we can make it the same in the race."

While a number of reliability issues have cost McLaren in the latter half of the season, the team is finishing the year strongly and Hamilton said he believes it's had the best car of 2012.

"The car's been strong all year, I think if there was an award for the best car of the year or the fastest car of the year it would go to us because we've had the fastest. This is eight or seven pole positions this year and we've been on the front row quite a lot of the time. The guys have done a great job and it's just a shame that we've not been able to see the results of all that hard work but I hope me and Jenson can do that tomorrow."

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