• Abu Dhabi Grand Prix - Qualifying

'Excited' Hamilton eyes strong start

Lewis Hamilton took his sixth pole position of the season in Abu Dhabi © Sutton Images

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• Report:
• Hamilton takes pole from Webber
  

• Race:
• Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Lewis Hamilton

• Teams:
• McLaren

Lewis Hamilton admits he is "very excited" by the prospect of starting from pole position for Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Having not taken pole position since Singapore, Hamilton was dominant at Yas Marina as his first run in Q3 was enough to take pole position by over 0.3s. Looking ahead to the race Hamilton said it would be nice to not have Red Bulls ahead of him on the grid but said his pace simply a case of the car working well on the circuit.

"I'm very excited, very excited," Hamilton said. "It's the first time for a long time to be ahead of the Bulls and not to be seeing the tail of them at the start of the race, but I know that it's going to be - as always - very, very tough in the race because they've got great race pace, but I hope that we are strong enough to fight them.

"The team have done a fantastic job all weekend; the car has felt beautiful all weekend. I don't know why the car works so well here, we've not really made any improvements to the car since the last race so I guess it just suits the track. The guys are still massively focused so I hope that tomorrow's a good day for us."

Hamilton believes that McLaren's race pace "should be quite competitive" but admits the start of the race will be key to his hopes of victory.

"We did a couple of long runs that seemed to be OK. On one of my long runs I had a lot of traffic but Jenson had a fairly decent long run which shows that a bit like the last race we should be quite competitive. But for me it's trying to improve the start of the race as these guys are always so quick on the first couple of laps."

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