(CNN) Lewis Hamilton is keeping his slim F1 title hopes alive by beating team mate and rival Nico Rosberg to pole position for Sunday's Brazilian Grand Prix.
The British driver is 19 points behind his Mercedes colleague and really needs to win at the Interlagos circuit in Sao Paulo Sunday to have any chance of taking the championship to a decider in Abu Dhabi.
He finished 0.1 seconds ahead of the German driver who is looking for his first world title.
Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen will start in third place, ahead of Red Bull's Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel in the other Ferrari.
Daniel Ricciardo, Romain Grosjean, Nico Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso make up the rest of the top 10 on the grid.
Mercedes vs. Mercedes: Race for the title
Mercedes teammates Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg size each other up as the season begins in Melbourne. On race day, Rosberg starts where he left off in 2015,
winning in Albert Park. A poor start relegated Hamilton from pole position to sixth but he fought back to finish second.
In Shanghai, Hamilton starts at the back after an engine problem in qualifying. He fights back to seventh but
Rosberg wins again to take a chunky 36-point lead in the championship.
President Vladimir Putin was on the podium to hand out the victory laurels to Rosberg once more. Another engine problem left Hamilton back in second as his teammate
moved into a 43-point lead.
But the Dutch teen only wins after the Mercedes rivals took each other out on the opening lap at the Circuit de Catalunya.
A thrilling duel between the Mercedes stars ends when the two cars make contact on the last lap. Hamilton survives
to take the win while Rosberg limps home in fourth, seeing his lead cut to 11 points.
Hamilton earns a hug from Hungarian model Barbara Palvin as he takes the lead in the world championship for the first time in 2016
thanks to a win in Budapest. The British driver moved into a six-point lead over Rosberg, who finished second.
A month later, Hamilton had to start at the back of the grid after Mercedes chose to make a raft of engine changes in Spa. Hamilton worked his way up to third, but Rosberg romped to the checkered flag
for his first win at the legendary circuit.
Rosberg is on a roll once more as he storms
to his first win at Monza and cuts Hamilton's championship lead to just two points. The defending champion had delivered an electrifying lap to start on pole but a poor getaway cost him and he eventually finished second.
Hamilton arrived in Kuala Lumpur determined to reignite the title battle, and everything was going smoothly until lap 43 of the race when his engine caught fire. "Oh no, no," moaned Hamilton as he was forced to retire. Rosberg finished third
behind Red Bull duo Ricciardo and Verstappen to extend his lead to 23 points.
Time to pull on the victory t-shirts! Mercedes wraps up its third straight constructors' championship in Suzuka.
Hamilton once again takes the spoils, winning
his first Mexico Grand Prix. Rosberg follows him home in second and, as F1 heads to Brazil for the penultimate race of the 2016 season, just 19 points separate the Mercedes drivers.
The Mercedes rivals share the podium at Interlagos as Hamilton dominates a rain-hit thriller to claim his first
Brazilian Grand Prix victory ahead of Rosberg. The result sends the title race down to the wire in Abu Dhabi.
The moment of triumph: Nico Rosberg finishes second behind Lewis Hamilton in Abu Dhabi to secure a first world title -- 34 years after his dad, Keke, won his.
Both Williams cars, driven by Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa, failed to make the last round of qualifying and will start lower down the grid.
It will be particularly disappointing for Massa who is racing in his last home grand prix after announcing his retirement at the end of the season.
It was the 60th pole of Hamilton's career -- but he has never won in Brazil so victory in Sunday's race will notch up another first at the birthplace of his hero Ayrton Senna.
"I felt quite comfortable in qualifying as I have done all through the weekend," he told reporters after the session.
Hamilton, the three-time world champion who is wearing a tribute helmet to Senna, added: "Nico generally has been going quicker as the weekend has gone on, but generally I have had it covered."
Mercedes rivalry
Rosberg, who is still favorite to take the championship, responded by saying: "Lewis was just marginally quicker in the end. Anyway, as we have seen this year, pole is not the guy who will necessarily win the race."
The rivalry between the two Mercedes drivers is intense and has occasionally turned ugly. The pair collided in the Spanish Grand Prix in May, putting them both out of the race, and tensions have spilled over off the track too.
Ahead of last year's podium ceremony at the US Grand Prix, Hamilton tossed a cap in Rosberg's direction only for the German to frustratedly sling it back -- Hamilton's had just clinched the world title with victory in Austin.
But former Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn told CNN he believes the situation can be managed.
"If you look at Prost-Senna or other situations where two drivers are fighting genuinely for a world championship, it's a pretty delicate situation," he said. "It's easy for that stuff to boil over.
"I think it's a testament to both Nico and Lewis and the management of the team which has kept it fairly level."