Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff hailed Lewis Hamilton as "mega" and "in a league of his own" on the day he made British Formula One history.
On a grey day in Shanghai, Hamilton at least shone by dominating every Chinese Grand Prix qualifying session to claim the 34th pole position of his career. The 29-year-old is now the most successful Briton over one lap in the sport's 64-year-history, moving ahead of legendary three-time champion Jim Clark, as well as France's four-time king Alain Prost.
Only Michael Schumacher (68), Ayrton Senna (65) and Sebastian Vettel (45) now stand ahead of the Mercedes driver in the pecking order.
After finishing six-tenths of a second clear of Daniel Ricciardo in his Red Bull, Hamilton said: "I definitely feel very blessed. I've had the chance to work with great people and to have had such good cars to be able to put in such good laps, even more so with this team.
"To have had so much success already at such an early stage with them, it's an incredible feeling.
"And to be up there among the greats, I'm very proud of that. To have passed Jim Clark's record, it's unbelievable, so I'm very grateful for that."
After clinching back-to-back wins for the first time in four years with his recent successes in Malaysia and Bahrain, Hamilton is now poised to claim three victories in a row for the first time in his career.
Doing so would allow him to close the 11-point gap on team-mate and championship leader Nico Rosberg, who starts fourth behind Red Bull duo Ricciardo and reigning four-time champion Vettel.
"On one side of it, I want my team-mate to finish - preferably behind me - for points for the team," added Hamilton.
"Of course, I started the season with a big deficit after the first race [won by Rosberg in Australia with Hamilton retiring], and I don't know how long that will take to close.
"But every point counts, although, I obviously don't wish anything bad on my team-mate.
The momentum would clearly appear to be with Hamilton, in particular after his brilliant defensive performance in Bahrain a fortnight ago when he kept Rosberg at bay for the final 10 laps with the German on quicker tyres.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article