Hamilton to start near back in Mercedes farewell

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — Lewis Hamilton said he would have loved a podium for his final race with Mercedes, but it “didn’t work out” in qualifying as he starts from the back of the grid for Sunday’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

Hamilton was eliminated from Q1 at Yas Marina, and he will start 16th on the grid after penalties are applied to Charles Leclerc and Franco Colapinto.

Hamilton told reporters afterward: “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.”

Hamilton, 39, will join Ferrari next season, bringing to an end the most successful team-driver partnership the sport has ever seen. The Briton 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.

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.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff said not sending Hamilton out earlier was an “idiotic mistake” by the team.

“I just need to apologise to Lewis,” Wolff told Sky Sports. “Also to everyone in the team that worked so hard in making it a great end for him. He was the quicker guy with that kind of setup we chose on the car to experiment for next year, we totally let him down.

“Idiotic mistake of not going earlier. Inexcusable, inexcusable. I’ve rarely been so down about what has happened. Maybe it summarises the last races we’ve had with him but this is the worst part of it because it was just idiotic.”

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 might 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 teammate 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 hard-core 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.”