It is a race for second place, but it has been that way all season. And Lewis Hamilton admitted on Saturday night that he cannot wait for it to end.

The Briton qualified a dismal 11th for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, with £8million hanging on whether his Mercedes team can paper over the cracks of a dispiriting season by beating Ferrari to runners-up spot in the constructors’ championship.

The Silver Arrows lead the Italians by four points with just Sunday’s 58 laps of this marathon campaign remaining.

But, it should be noted, they lie a far-flung 430 points behind Red Bull, for whom Max Verstappen claimed his customary pole position.

Whoever finishes second, Mercedes’ season can hardly be ranked as progress. They won one race last season and have won none this. Last year, they finished third, but ‘only’ 244 points back.

Lewis Hamilton has admitted that he cannot wait for the tough Formula One season to end

He qualified 11th in Abu Dhabi, as Mercedes look to beat Ferrari in the constructors’ race

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc is best placed to score heavily on Sunday evening local time, having qualified second.

His Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz was a misjudged and traffic-impeded 16th, but can yet make up ground and score heavily, such is the inherent pace of the red cars.

As for Mercedes, George Russell was fourth best. The 25-year-old, who has been outperformed by Hamilton generally this year, was the more assured of the pair throughout practice and qualifying.

‘It is just a very unpredictable car and it has been all year,’ said Hamilton, who has secured one podium in the last five races and admitted he had been ‘off all weekend’.

He added: ‘I’m definitely happy it is nearly over. It is more inconsistent than ever before.

‘It is up and down from the moment you hit the brakes, the moment you turn, the moment you hit the apex.

‘It is massively out of balance and hard to predict what is going to happen.’

That verdict comes at the end of a year of false dawns for Mercedes.

One wonders if they are any nearer discovering the essential ingredients of the ground-effect era 20 months after the current regulations took hold, a fallow period that has seen one technical director move sideways and then leave altogether; a failure pockmarked by obstinacy in sticking with an original design that was flawed for longer than was explicable.

Now they are left scrapping over the difference between £105m in prize money for finishing second against £96m for coming third. That will impact staff bonuses – determined by the constructors’ standings – and, to a lesser extent, perhaps, optimism on the future.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri was third quickest on Saturday, as the team finish the season strongly

Others, such as McLaren, are coming on stronger. Their Oscar Piastri was third quickest on Saturday. And team-mate Lando Norris, fifth, would likely have beaten him but for his qualifying mistake.

‘I’m doing a s*** job on Saturdays,’ said the Briton.

Going back to Mercedes, Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion, hopes the serial winners can rediscover the high road, but he knows there are no certainties.

‘I have a gut instinct that there is a bunker mentality,’ he said. ‘When you have been winning for so long you can think what you are doing is always right and what everyone else is doing is wrong. Then you can get lost.’

Asked if team principal Toto Wolff is missing his former non-executive chairman, the triple world champion Niki Lauda who died in 2019, Hill thought this was probably the case, saying: ‘He was a clear, hard-nosed pragmatist. What does Toto know of F1 other than success? Never the doldrums.’

Not until now, no matter how Mercedes’ private duel with Ferrari turns out.