Hamilton feels "nothing is going to stop" Mercedes

The world champion beat teammate Nico Rosberg to secure his fourth pole at Sepang, finishing over four tenths ahead of the German and over half a second in front of the first non-Mercedes driver, Max Verstappen.

After Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo came close to beating Rosberg in Singapore, where Hamilton finished down in third, the Briton is expecting things to be much better on Sunday.

"This has been a night and day difference to the weekend I had in Singapore," said Hamilton, who also secured his 100th front row start in F1, joining Michael Schumacher as the only other driver to do it.

"In Singapore, say you have 13 or 10 laps in a practice session, I may have finished two.

"This weekend has been about building those blocks, building that wall – we've got lots of mileage, and really good steps forward with the guys in the garage, the engineers have done an incredible job. The car felt fantastic.

"There's been nothing else to do but focus on this weekend, which is a good thing. I don't feel any distraction.

"Honestly, I don't feel anything is going to stop us. As a team, I think we've got great, great pace. We had good starts in the last race, and we're constantly working on that, that's not in my mind. The car feels really good on the long runs."

Hamilton is confident Mercedes has made progress with its starts ahead of the race, after struggling with them in recent events.

"It is the same [start system] we have had all year, so there is no changes to it," said Hamilton. "It is just race on race we are trying to understand it more and predict what it is going to delivered.

"We generally got good starts in the last races so we are improving gradually."

Rosberg still optimistic

Although Rosberg could not match his teammate's pace in qualifying, the championship leader remains confident he can beat Hamilton in the race.

"Lewis' lap was quicker so it was always going to be difficult to beat," said Rosberg.

"Unfortunately I made a mistake in the last corner, something was not going right at the last corner as I always had a big oversteer moment in there.

"Second place, I can live with that now, as we know from this year we know victory is possible from second place. We've seen it so many times, so I am very optimistic."