- Hamilton says Ferrari’s power deficit won’t matter on Monaco’s twisting streets.
- Setup gamble in Montreal delivered Hamilton’s strongest Ferrari performance yet.
- Data says Ferrari trails Mercedes by 0.06% at Monaco, smallest gap of the season.
Lewis Hamilton finished second at the 2026 Canadian Grand Prix, his best result since joining Ferrari. He crossed the line behind race winner Kimi Antonelli at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
The result came with a clear admission from the seven-time world champion: Ferrari’s engine is not powerful enough, and the straights are where that gap hurts most. Hamilton believes Monaco, next on the calendar, should change that picture.
A race that had everything
Antonelli won the Canadian GP for his fourth consecutive victory of the season. Hamilton took second for Ferrari, with Max Verstappen completing the podium for Red Bull Racing.
The race was complicated from the start. Mercedes team-mates Antonelli and George Russell swapped the lead multiple times in the early laps. Russell’s race ended when his power unit failed, scattering debris on the track and ending his 38-race finishing streak.
Hamilton started fifth. The McLarens, who chose to start the race on intermediate tyres, effectively gifted him multiple positions. He climbed to third before Verstappen’s Red Bull pushed him back to fourth.
Russell’s retirement triggered a Virtual Safety Car. After that, Hamilton had one target: Verstappen, who sat 7 seconds up the road.
Hamilton cut that gap lap by lap, but Ferrari’s power deficit made a clean overtake look unlikely. On lap 62, he went around the outside of Verstappen at Turn 1 and took second place. Verstappen finished just half a second behind him.
“I need more power,” Hamilton had said over the team radio before that move. He found a way around that problem rather than through it.
The setup gamble that changed everything
Hamilton’s improvement in Montreal was not a matter of luck. He had deliberately changed his approach to the weekend, working through data with his engineers to arrive at a car set-up that suited how he drives.
“I chose a different set-up this weekend through just ciphering through the data, working really well with my engineer,” Hamilton said after the race.
“There’s a lot of changes that I’ve had to ask for, and Fred’s been super supportive and again also moving mountains in order to make me comfortable. And it’s finally starting to show in my performance.”
Charles Leclerc had outpaced him clearly at the two previous rounds in Japan and Miami. Hamilton also chose not to use the simulator before arriving in Canada. That decision, he said, paid off.
“That’s probably the best qualifying session we’ve had for some time,” he said. “The car felt really fantastic from P1. And, also, the fact that I didn’t do the sim, and it was the best I’ve felt all year, so I think that’s the way forward for me.”
Massively down, but hopeful
The satisfaction of a podium did not stop Hamilton from being direct about Ferrari’s real position in the field. He described a pattern that repeated itself throughout the Canadian GP: he could match his rivals through the corners, but they pulled away every time they hit a straight.
“If you take away the power deficit, we’re in the fight with these guys,” Hamilton said, via comments shared on X. “But unfortunately, that’s not the way it is today. I’m able to hold on or keep up with them through the corners, and I can’t push the pedal any further.”
“And you see them just eking out the straight, and you catch them back in the brakes, they eke it out in the straight. It’s really hard. Even when you get the overtake, you get within a second, they still pull away. So that’s how much grunt that they have, and we’re massively down.”
The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve rewards engines heavily. Long acceleration zones punish any power shortfall, and Ferrari’s deficit to Mercedes has shown up in straight-line speed differences of more than 10 km/h on key sections this season.
Mercedes also supplies McLaren, Alpine and Williams, meaning Ferrari is chasing a significant portion of the field on horsepower alone.
Hamilton has said Ferrari risks going backwards in 2026 if that gap does not close. He pointed to the FIA’s ADUO framework, which creates additional development opportunities for manufacturers, as a potential route forward.
“I really hope with this new rule that enables us to try to improve some performance, so we can get back in the fight with them,” he said.
Monaco should be fun, says Hamilton
Hamilton is already focused on what comes next. Monaco’s tight, winding streets reduce the value of outright power and place a higher premium on aerodynamic balance, mechanical grip and driver judgment.
He believes the SF-26’s strengths could be much more visible there.
“Monaco should be fun,” he said. “That’s the one track that power is not king. I think that’s definitely car performance. I think our car could be really strong there.“
“I’m really going to focus on making sure I arrive with the same energy as I had this weekend, really study hard with the engineers to make sure we position the car in the right place from Practice 1.”
Data published by Formula 1, based on estimated car and circuit characteristics, supports his thinking. It ranks Monaco as the circuit with the lowest projected pace deficit for Ferrari relative to Mercedes, at 0.06%.
Hungary follows at 0.07%. At the other end of the scale, Spa-Francorchamps puts Ferrari at a 0.54% disadvantage. The pattern is consistent: the slower and more technical the circuit, the closer Ferrari gets.
Monaco has historically been a strong circuit for Leclerc, making it an interesting test for both Ferrari drivers. Whether Hamilton can carry the engineering confidence and setup instincts he built in Montreal into the principality remains to be seen.
His comments after Canada suggest he is going there with a genuine belief and with a clear plan for how to get there.
