A clean late pass on Max Verstappen, a second-place finish and a smile that has been missing for months. At 41, at the circuit where it all began, Lewis Hamilton finally looked like himself in red.

Lewis Hamilton finished second at the Canadian Grand Prix, his best result since joining Ferrari, and he sealed it in the most Hamilton way available to him. With six laps remaining, he tracked down Max Verstappen and made a decisive, clean move into Turn 1 to claim the position, a throwback to the duels that defined the pair’s championship battles. “Absolutely awesome to fight with one of the greats,” Hamilton said afterwards. “It’s been pretty tough for the past year and a bit, so to finally find our sweet spot and have a good weekend, it’s an amazing feeling. And actually got to have a race with Max, which is great.”

The result carried a weight beyond a single podium. The Canadian Grand Prix is where Hamilton took his maiden Formula 1 victory in 2007, as a rookie, in his first season. Returning to the same circuit nearly two decades later to record his strongest weekend yet in Ferrari colors gave the result a symmetry that was not lost on him. He had looked sharper across every session in Montreal, qualifying fifth and racing with a confidence that has been conspicuously absent through a difficult first year and a bit at Maranello.

The performance was built on a Ferrari that finally behaved in race conditions. The cold and windy weather at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, combined with a layout that neutralises the SF-26’s straight-line weakness, allowed Hamilton to extract a level of performance the car had not shown him earlier in the season. His late battle with Verstappen, conducted in gusty conditions on a circuit with no margin for error, was the kind of high-pressure wheel-to-wheel racing that has always flattered him. He did not put a wheel wrong.

The championship context makes the result more than a feel-good story. Hamilton now sits just three points behind teammate Charles Leclerc in the Drivers’ standings, having closed what had been a meaningful gap. The dynamic at Ferrari has been the subject of growing external commentary, with some pundits openly framing Leclerc as the team’s clear number one and Hamilton as a struggling number two. Montreal does not settle that debate, but it complicates the narrative considerably. A Hamilton operating at this level is not a supporting act.

The timing is significant for the team as a whole. Ferrari endured a difficult Miami weekend, bringing 11 upgrades and slipping backwards, with Hamilton scrapping his simulator preparation for Canada after concluding the virtual car was not reflecting reality. That decision, unconventional as it was, preceded his best weekend of the year. Whether the two are connected or coincidental, the result has given Ferrari something to build on after weeks of mounting concern, and lifted the team to within two points of Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship.

The question now is whether Montreal was a turning point or an outlier. Hamilton’s first season and a half at Ferrari has been defined by flashes of competitiveness that failed to sustain, by a car that has rarely given him a stable platform, and by the persistent sense that the most successful partnership of his career was behind him. The European season opens at Monaco on June 5 to 7, a circuit where Hamilton has won three times and where qualifying performance is everything. He arrives with his best result of the year fresh behind him and, for the first time in a long time, genuine momentum. “To finally find our sweet spot,” he called it. Monaco will reveal whether he can hold it.

Thumbnail: By courtesy of Pirelli