Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton said it was an "incredible feeling" after taking pole in the Formula One Chinese Grand Prix.
Hamilton timed 1:34.484 to finish fastest in Q3, with Kimi Raikkonen of Lotus and Ferrari's Fernando Alonso taking second and third place on the grid respectively.
"An incredible feeling, so happy to have our first pole for some time," Hamilton told reporters. "I'm just ecstatic really. The lap was great. The team performed well all weekend so far and I hope that we can carry that into tomorrow (Sunday)."
The former McLaren man said he was surprised at the almost 0.3 second gap between his time and the rest of the pack.
"Really surprising because obviously in P3 the Ferraris were very, very quick -- didn't know where they'd be in qualifying," he added." Obviously we had really good pace for Q1 and Q2 but that last lap is so difficult to get.
"Obviously in qualifying we had 10 minutes but we left it down to right to like three minutes to go or something like that. You've got to get the perfect out lap, you've got to do the perfect lap to get yourself up there and I really can't complain about the laps, so I'm really happy."
Raikkonen was pretty satisfied with second place on the grid, while saying the Lotus car was still not quite up to the pace.
"I think the gap is quite big still and we don't have that speed right now," he said. "So, second is not bad, I think it's the best that I've been with the team ever.
"Not too bad, but of course you'd rather be in first place but I guess we don't have the speed. I think we are missing downforce in the middle sector a bit, but we'll see what we can do tomorrow."
The Ferraris were impressive in the practice sessions, and were expected to dominate qualifying, but Alonso was still quite happy with third place.
"Very happy. I think the weekend has been very good for us," the Spaniard said. "The car felt completely different Friday.
"This morning we made some changes and the car is responding well and I think we have a good setup for the race as well, which is more important than qualifying always and I think tomorrow if everything goes well we should be able to fight for the podium, hopefully with both cars, so this is good news so far for the team."
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