Lewis Hamilton is a master of the Canadian Grand Prix. His magnificent record at the circuit has raised hopes that he can deliver a morale-boosting result for Ferrari.
Hamilton has won the Canadian GP seven times – tied with Michael Schumacher at the top of the leaderboard. He claimed his first ever F1 victory at this venue in 2007.
While he hasn’t stood on the top step in Montreal since 2019, there are a couple of caveats. The race was absent for two years due to the pandemic, and he hasn’t necessarily had the machinery to win since.
He nonetheless picked up podiums in 2022 and 2023, taking him to 10 overall at the circuit. There are only five tracks where he’s finished in the top three more often.
| RANK | TRACK | PODIUMS |
| 1 | Silverstone | 15 |
| =2 | Barcelona | 12 |
| =2 | Hungaroring | 12 |
| =4 | Sakhir | 11 |
| =4 | Spa | 11 |
| =6 | Montreal | 10 |
| =6 | Melbourne | 10 |
| =6 | Yas Marina | 10 |
Hamilton enters the weekend sixth in the world championship and is yet to spray the champagne on a Sunday. He collected eight points in Spain but was dejected after the race after being overtaken by Nico Hulkenberg in the customer Sauber car.
Karun Chandhok says Lewis Hamilton may still have doubts over Ferrari engineering
Speaking in the FIA press conference on Thursday, Hamilton said Ferrari’s set-up approach for the Canadian Grand Prix is ‘completely different’ to what he was used to at Mercedes and McLaren.
Hamilton feels there were certain engineering decisions that didn’t ‘make sense’. He was keen to transmit the secrets of his own success at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
During Sky Sports’ coverage of FP2, Karun Chandhok said this highlighted a lack of complete ‘trust’ between Hamilton and his engineers. Ferrari have only won once in Canada since 2004 (Sebastian Vettel in 2018).
“You know what was really interesting for me yesterday?” Chandhok said. “Lewis’ comments around how Ferrari set the car up for this weekend. It’s completely different to anything he recalls doing with Mercedes or the approach that he’s had in all the years coming here.
“It’s part of the process of them figuring each other out and working out their way of doing things. I always think as a driver you’ve got to be careful to just go in there and try and change too much.
“Ultimately, the engineers have the technical knowledge and understanding of how to make things work. You have to trust them, you have to have that degree of trust.
“I think that’s what going on here – to me, that just summed up that they’re still having to build that level of trust – ‘okay, I’ve done things my way for many years and it’s worked for me, but you’re doing things a different way, and now I need to figure out if we can trust that actually, your way is also going to be okay’.”
Fred Vasseur extremely defensive over mysterious Lewis Hamilton issue at Ferrari
After Hamilton appeared in the official drivers’ presser, Fred Vasseur represented Ferrari in the team principals’ session on Friday. Naturally, most of the questions concerned his future.
But Vasseur was also asked about a mystery issue Hamilton had experienced in his gruelling final stint at the Spanish GP. The seven-time world champion indicated that he wasn’t allowed to explain the problem.
“When I’m telling you in the press conference that I won’t disclose, don’t come back ten minutes later to try to understand,” an extremely defensive Vasseur said. “And the Friday after to try to understand – I won’t disclose what’s happened. It is like it is. Full stop.”
Pressed on the matter, he sarcastically replied: “We put the front wheel at the rear.”
Hamilton emulated Michael Schumacher by mounting a passionate defence of his embattled team principal heading into the weekend.
