Mercedes driver and four time world champion Lewis Hamilton is on the brink of winning his fifth world drivers title after claiming pole position for the Japanese Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton claimed his 80th pole position in his Formula 1 career, the Brit broke Michael Schumacher’s record last year but he is continuing to extend his gap in the record books.

“It’s been an incredible year,” he said. “It’s my 80th, I can’t believe I have 80. I never in a million years thought I would get to 80. The last six years with this team has been incredible, I’m proud of everyone, I’m so grateful for everyone’s hard work.

“You see today we did such a great job in terms of timing, today [there were] no mistakes even though there was a lot of pressure on us as there always it. Everyone was calm cool and collected, it’s an amazing journey to be on this team. That’s not the end, 80 is not the end, but it’s a milestone I’m very proud of.”

Qualifying was a tricky endeavour for teams as they contested unpredictable weather conditions. Hamilton says that Mercedes handled the situation beautifully, staying calm to make all of the right calls.

“[Qualifying] started out okay but you look out of the garage and see its spitting but very humid,” he said. “I saw a couple of cars spin, it’s very, very difficult to know if the track was dry or wet, obviously we didn’t have any practice in the wet, it looked like it would be wet for Q3.

“It’s definitely not great going into Q3 knowing you’ve had pace to be at the front and knowing mistakes can come in those tricky positions, [but] we’re all in same boat. We were waiting for someone else to go first, Ferrari pulled out on Inters and I didn’t think it was the right decision.

“Obviously we made the right decision as a team, it was an anti-climax as we didn’t do that second lap. I wish you could see going into Turn 1, as you come out of the last corner and there’s no spots on your visor, then one spit, two spits, 10 spits, at Turn 1 you’re not sure if wet or dry so I tip-toed in there and lucky I did that as others went off.”