ABU DHABI -- Lewis Hamilton won the final race of the Formula One season in Abu Dhabi, crowning his championship-winning 2018 campaign with an 11th victory from 21 races.

Hamilton secured the 2018 title two races ago in Mexico, but has shown no signs of letting up with back-to-back victories at the final two grands prix of the year.

Sunday's race in Abu Dhabi was not without incident -- including a scary first lap accident for Nico Hulkenberg and some rare desert rain at the midway point -- but Hamilton executed a solid strategy to take victory by 2.5s from Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel.

Mercedes looked locked on for a one-two victory until Valtteri Bottas started to struggle with hsi tyres with 20 laps remaining and lost second position to Vettel. At that point Vettel was 7.1s behind Hamilton and had fresher tyres, but didn't quite have the pace to worry Hamilton in the final third of the race. Bottas then lost more positions to the two Red Bulls before finishing fifth following a second pit stop for fresh tyres.

Max Verstappen completed another impressive drive to snatch third place in his Red Bull from sixth on the grid. The result was enough to move him ahead of Bottas in the drivers' standings and just two points shy of Kimi Raikkonen in third place overall, who retired from his last race with Ferrari on Sunday due to a reliability issue.

Daniel Ricciardo led the race for 16 laps after staying out longer than the other front runners on his first set of tyres, but the strategy failed to give him the tyre advantage he had hoped for in the closing stages and he finished fourth in his final race for Red Bull before heading to Renault next year.

Carlos Sainz took sixth place in his final race for Renault before heading to McLaren, ahead of Charles Leclerc in seventh in his final race for Sauber before moving to Ferrari. Sergio Perez took eighth for Force India ahead of the two Haas drivers of Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen in the final points-paying positions.

Fernando Alonso finished his final F1 race in 11th place, 12.5s off what would have been the 1,900th point of his career. He was chasing Magnussen down for tenth place in the final laps of the race, but skipped a corner twice on the final two laps, resulting in two five-second penalties.

Hamilton made a strong start to lead Bottas and Vettel into the first corner as Verstappen dropped from sixth place to 10th in the space of the opening two corners. That gave him a front-row view of a scary accident at Turn 8 as Hulkenberg and Grosjean made contact while fighting for seventh position.

Hulkenberg launched his car up the inside of Grosjean's at Turn 7 but failed to leave him space in Turn 8 and his right rear wheel made contact with Grosjean's front left. That sent the Renault into a barrel roll towards the barriers, where Hulkenberg came to a rest upside down. His car briefly caught fire at the rear, leading to concerns he would be trapped inside, but marshals arrived quickly on the scene to extinguish the flames and put the car back on four wheels.

A Safety Car period followed as Hulkenberg extracted himself from the car unharmed, with racing resuming on lap five. However, just two laps later the race came under a Virtual Safety Car to clear Raikkonen's Ferrari, which had stopped on the pit straight with a reliability issue.

That offered an opportunity to pit for all drivers, but Hamilton was the only one to take advantage and dived into the pits for a new set of super-softs. It set up a lengthily 48-lap stint to the flag on a single set of super-softs, but Hamilton gained a chunk of time by pitting while the rest of the field was running at a slower pace and was then able to nurse his tyres to the end without ever coming under threat from the cars behind.

Rain fell at Turn 7 and on the back straight between lap 24 and 27, but was not heavy enough to influence strategy. Bottas was the only driver who struggled with his tyres later in the race, dropping from second place to fifth, and adopting the only two-stop strategy in the field to finish a distant fifth place.

The result caps off another victorious season for Mercedes in both drivers' and constructors' championship, although Ferrari's performance provided close competition for the first half of the year.

The 2019 season gets underway in February next year when the teams return to the Circuit de Catalunya outside Barcelona for pre-season testing.