Lewis Hamilton delivered his best session in a Ferrari so far at the Canadian Grand Prix, finishing fifth in Sprint Qualifying after a small mistake on his last run. It was enough to put him ahead of Charles Leclerc for the first time since the second round in China in any competitive session on track.
Hamilton said on Thursday in Montreal that he had not used Ferrari's simulator before the weekend, and on Friday he explained why the team looked sharper. The car, he said, had felt fantastic from first practice, with only subtle changes made going into qualifying. He also said he had chosen a setup the team had never tried before, one that transformed the car for him.
“That's probably the best qualifying session we've had for some time,” Hamilton said, adding that the engineers had done “really great work” with the setup changes. He said the car had felt “really fantastic” from P1 and that the team only made small adjustments before qualifying. That left him, by his own account, enjoying the session more than he had at any point this year.
The result mattered because Hamilton had been clearly outperformed by Leclerc at the last two races in Japan and Miami, and Ferrari had arrived in Montreal with no upgrades while Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull all carried new parts. The team had also spent the three-week gap since the last race poring over data to understand its car, a pause that appears to have helped Hamilton and his engineers find a direction that suited him better.
There was still a caveat. Hamilton said SQ1 and SQ2 had looked strong, but he was not sure why the others were able to “turn up a little bit more” when it mattered most. Even so, he described the session as the most comfortable he had felt all year and said skipping the simulator had helped him focus on training and on the finer points of ride stability, corner balance and mechanical balance.
That matters for Ferrari because this weekend was not supposed to be about challenging at the front. Yet Hamilton's pace, and the fact that he was able to beat Leclerc, suggested there may be more performance available if the setup direction holds. The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has also been kind to him before: it was the site of his maiden pole position and victory in 2007, a reminder that Montreal has long suited his style.
Hamilton said he hoped the unusual setup choice would “bode well for the rest of the weekend,” with the next key checkpoints set for 5pm on Saturday, 4pm and 9pm ET depending on the session schedule. If the car continues to respond the way it did in Sprint Qualifying, Ferrari may have found a small but meaningful opening in a weekend that had largely been expected to belong to others.
