Sebastian Vettel has openly said he is content with a second-row start for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix after he claimed to have 'given it everything' he had.
Vettel had been putting pressure on Mercedes during the final qualifying session of the season to try and secure his first pole position since the German Grand Prix but was unable to topple the Silver Arrows at the front.
The four-time World Champion managed to get within half a tenth of a second of Lewis Hamilton, however, the British driver had made a mistake on his first run running wide into Turn 8.
Both Mercedes had managed to get inside the 1:34s barrier while Vettel will head the second row of the grid with team-mate Kimi Raikkonen alongside him in his final race for Ferrari.
"I think they competitive all weekend," said the German. "It has been a bit up and down for us Q1 we were very fast and Q2 I thought pole might be realistic but I know Lewis had a very strong lap on the Ultrasoft.
"I think we tried everything and gave it everything we had. After the first run, it didn’t look stupid at all, it was very close, half a tenth so I was in reach but then in the second run obviously that was the line.
"I was quite happy with the lap but then I dropped back to third so I guess their first run was probably not as strong as ours. The track did improve but it is a long lap and there is a lot of lap time to be found when everything works out."
The Ferrari driver will start the race on the purple-marked Ultrasoft tyre despite a scare in the early part of Q2, Vettel had flirted with the drop zone after a poor first run in the session.
"I was happy with our session and happy that we are able to put in a strong lap for Q2 which is important for tomorrow’s race," added Vettel.
"I think yesterday we tried everything and obviously for us, the Ultrasoft didn’t last so long so we were quite confident that it would be a race tyre and a tyre we want to start on.
"But obviously others have tried the same thing. On the second run, I had some lap time to gain as I had some traffic on the first lap.
"I thought it would be tight but I really wanted to start on that tyre so that why I was able and happy to take that risk."
