Valtteri Bottas expressed encouragement at his late-season one-lap pace as he capped the 2017 campaign with back-to-back pole positions.
Bottas duelled with Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton for top spot at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with the pair trading quick times through Q1 and Q2.
Bottas pulled ahead during the early stages of Q3 with the quickest ever lap of the Yas Marina Circuit, almost two-tenths clear of Hamilton.
Neither driver improved on their second efforts, ensuring Bottas sealed pole position for the fourth time this season, and for the second successive race, having also headed qualifying in Brazil.
“It's only the fourth pole of my whole career and I had to beat some pretty good qualifiers, so it's a great feeling to start from P1 tomorrow,” said Bottas, who also scored pole in Bahrain and Austria.
“It was a really good qualifying, clean and smooth. With the changes we made, the car was behaving much better in qualifying than it did in free practice.
“Run after run, I could always find some time here and there, I really worked on the details.
“But the weekend is not over yet; we want to finish strong tomorrow as well.
“We were nearly there in Sao Paulo and now I get a second opportunity. It would mean a lot to end the season on a high.
“However, no matter how tomorrow goes, it will be nice to head into the winter break knowing that I had the speed to be on pole two races in a row.
“That's a good feeling and a good basis to start working for 2018.”
