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.
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.”
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 on what was his preparation lap.
“That was bad, man. Jesus,” Hamilton added on the radio.
Team boss Toto Wolff replied: “Yeah, shit, Lewis. That was bad.”
Source: espn.com