The Formula 1 ace saw off competition from Red Bull's Max Verstappen - outpacing him by 0.018 seconds - to finish first in the Sprint Qualifying at the Shanghai International Circuit on Friday (21.03.25) giving him the chance to start from the front in the Sprint on Saturday (22.03.25).
Seven-time champion Hamilton said: "I'm a bit in shock. I can't believe we got a pole in the sprint. It's not the main race so we have some work to do for tomorrow.
"I didn't expect that result but so happy and so proud. The last race was a disaster for us. We knew there was more performance in the car. It came alive from lap one."
Max Verstappen came second in the qualifier with McLaren's Oscar Piastri in third. Piastri's McLaren teammate Lando Norris - who won the opening race in Australia last weekend - lagged behind in sixth place.
The Sprint is shorter than a Grand Prix - covering around a third of the distance - and lasts around 30 minutes. It will take place around 3am GMT on Saturday (22.03.25) following by the qualifier for the main event at 7am GMT.
Hamilton's achievement came after a "tricky" start to his career with Ferrari with the Brit coming in 10th in the recent Australian Grand Prix and admitting his debut with the team was "a lot worse" than he expected it to be.
Speaking after the race, he said: "It's very tricky, and went a lot worse than I thought that it would go. The car was really hard to drive today.
"So for me, I'm just grateful that I kept it out of the wall, because that's really where it wanted to go most of the time.
"(There was) a lot to take from it. Just getting acclimatized to a new power unit in the wet conditions (and) all the settings that it requires – a different way of driving, a different setup on the steering wheel."
He added to Sky Sports: "I felt like I was in the deep end today – just everything is new. From the first time I was driving this car in the rain, the car was behaving a lot different to what I've experienced in the past, the power unit, all the steering functions - all the things are thrown to you and you're trying to juggle them.
"I didn't have any confidence today in it unfortunately, so I'm going to make some changes next week to the car. Today was the braking and the rear stability, particularly on power - there was lots of snaps, I was nearly in the wall a lot!"
