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, 0.093 seconds.
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 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 may feel it cost him a spot in Q2.
