Lewis Hamilton will start on pole position for the final Malaysian Grand Prix, claiming his 70th career pole position with his main Formula 1 championship rival Sebastian Vettel down in last place.

A storming effort from Hamilton sees him start on pole position for a fifth time in Malaysia seeing off Kimi Raikkonen by just 0.045s.

Hamilton’s initial benchmark of a 1m30.076s put him 0.2s clear of Raikkonen. The Mercedes driver failed to improve on his second effort as Raikkonen closed the gap to less than a tenth of a second.

Hamilton’s main rival Vettel will start tomorrow’s Malaysian Grand Prix down in 20th place after suffering a turbo issue in Q1. The German suffered an engine issue at the end of FP3 which resulted in a speedy engine change prior to qualifying.

Max Verstappen was ahead of Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo yet again in qualifying. They will line up third and fifth ahead of the second Mercedes of Valtteri Bottas.

Esteban Ocon leads the tight midfield pack and will start sixth, ahead of McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne. Nico Hulkenberg was once again inside the top 10 in eighth, beating Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso.

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Felipe Massa failed to improve on his final run of Q2 and was unable to progress into the pole position shootout, meaning he will start 11th. Jolyon Palmer was 12th, and beaten by team-mate Hulkenberg for the 15th time in qualifying this season.

Stroll lines up 13th ahead of Carlos Sainz and Pierre Gasly, who will start 15th on his F1 first grand prix.

Both Haas drivers continued to struggle for pace and were knocked out of Q1 along with both Saubers and, of course, Vettel, who will start from 20th place.