For Lewis Hamilton, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has always been a happy place. He won his first ever Formula 1 race there in 2007 and has since returned to the podium at Montreal more times than most drivers manage in entire careers. On Sunday, he added another chapter to that story, and this one carried a different kind of weight.<\/p>\n
Hamilton celebrated his P2 finish at the Canadian Grand Prix as his \u201chappiest day at Ferrari so far,\u201d with the seven-time world champion feeling \u201cvery light\u201d after securing his best finish since joining the Scuderia. The result came after a season and a bit of adjustment, frustration, and the kind of public pressure that follows a driver of Hamilton\u2019s profile wherever he goes.<\/p>\n
The race itself told a story about Hamilton\u2019s growing comfort with the Ferrari. Starting fifth, he worked his way forward through the field, and after Russell\u2019s retirement and the strategic reshuffling that followed, he found himself in a straight fight with Max Verstappen for second place. Hamilton ultimately won the fight and crossed the line in second, with Verstappen third, securing another shared podium for the two drivers. In the cooldown room afterward, the two exchanged a warm debrief that sent fans into a collective wave of nostalgia.<\/p>\n
Hamilton\u2019s comment about feeling light is worth paying attention to. Driver confidence in a car is not a vague, intangible thing. It is specific and it shows up in lap time data. When a driver trusts his machine through a corner, he commits differently. The braking point changes, the steering input changes, and the lap time reflects it. What fans saw in Canada suggested Hamilton is finally beginning to feel that level of trust with the Ferrari SF-26.<\/p>\n
Hamilton is now just three points behind Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc in the standings after the Canadian round, which adds an internal dynamic to Ferrari\u2019s season that did not really exist a few weeks ago. Leclerc endured a miserable weekend in Montreal, and Hamilton delivered his best result of the year. That shift in momentum within the garage is something Ferrari will have to manage carefully heading into Monaco.<\/p>\n
If Canada was the turning point, the rest of 2026 just got a lot more interesting for the Scuderia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For Lewis Hamilton, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has always been a happy place. He won his first ever Formula 1\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":331,"featured_media":52953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4670,9],"tags":[5598,2394,5651,5649,5647,5601,5650,5646,5648,5645],"class_list":["post-52804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-driver-standings","category-formula-1","tag-canadian-grand-prix-2026","tag-charles-leclerc","tag-f1-2026-season","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari-f1-2026","tag-formula-1-news","tag-hamilton-montreal","tag-hamilton-podium","tag-hamilton-verstappen-battle","tag-lewis-hamilton-ferrari"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/331"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52804"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52804\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52963,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52804\/revisions\/52963"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/52953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}