Lewis Hamilton has had louder weekends in Montreal, more dominant ones too, but this one carried a different kind of weight. Second place with Ferrari — his first P2 in red — wasn’t just a bounce-back result, it felt like a release. The radio tone, the body language in parc fermé, even the way he spoke afterwards: this was a driver who’d finally been able to breathe again.
And yes, Hamilton had a simple explanation ready when asked why the whole thing seemed to click: his mum.
Carmen Larbalestier was in the paddock all weekend, staying with him in the apartment he keeps in the city. Hamilton, never shy about leaning into routines and rhythm, called her his “lucky charm” after turning a P5 start into a podium — and doing it the hard way, including a standout overtake on Max Verstappen that underlined he still has that instinct for the high-stakes moment.
“It’s been a really cool weekend,” Hamilton said. “I get an apartment here and so my mom stayed with me. So, every night we’d have dinner together and we’d watch a movie or just sit up talking. It’s been awesome.
“And we’re going on a little bit of a trip for a couple of days, so I’m really excited about that.
“And to go on a positive result as well is awesome. So, I definitely need to, now she has to come, she’s clearly my lucky omen, my lucky charm, have her come every weekend.”
There’s an easy version of this story — the sentimental one — but the paddock reality is a little sharper. Hamilton’s last season at Mercedes was a slog by his own standards, and his first year with Ferrari didn’t immediately bring the reset many expected. When a driver of his stature starts appearing more drained than defiant, people notice. Montreal, though, brought back the old Hamilton tells: the focus through the weekend, the conviction in his braking, the willingness to properly lean on the car rather than manage around it.
It helped, of course, that this is one of his tracks. Montreal sits just behind Silverstone and the Hungaroring on his personal win list, and even now it seems to suit the way he likes to attack a lap — aggressive where it needs to be, precise where it matters. The result was his 204th career podium and his first since China, where Larbalestier was also present when he finished third on Mothers’ Day. Hamilton noticed the pattern. So did everybody else.
The bigger tell was how he framed it: not as a weekend that simply fell into place, but one he had to fight for — emotionally and operationally — to bring Ferrari to a point where he could actually do something with it.
“Had so much fun out there all weekend,” he said. “Every single lap, I felt like we started on the right foot, came with the right attitude and the car really generally felt great.
“And so, to come to Montreal, a track that I do love, and get to enjoy a Sprint weekend here, which is the first that we’ve had [here], was awesome.
“And this is my first second place with the team. It’s something I’ve been working so hard, I can’t even begin to explain how deep I’ve had to dig to be able to get to this point, and the work and moving mountains in the background to enable this sort of performance.
“But I’m really grateful to the team for continuing to hold me up high and support me weekend in, weekend out. And it’s a really lovely feeling to see them so happy, because they truly deserve it with all the hard work they put in.”
That last part mattered. Ferrari’s mood swings are famous, but so is the way momentum can become a force inside Maranello when it’s given something to cling to. A Hamilton podium isn’t just points — it’s proof of concept. And it was noticeable how much he wanted to credit the people around him, almost as if to acknowledge that the early turbulence of his time in red hasn’t only landed on his shoulders.
In pure numbers, Montreal moved him to fourth in the drivers’ standings on 72 points, three behind Charles Leclerc. That gap is small enough to be annoying and useful in equal measure: annoying because it invites immediate comparison inside the team, useful because it keeps both cars in the conversation and gives Ferrari genuine leverage in the season’s fight near the front.
Still, the more interesting bit isn’t whether Hamilton can keep sticking podiums together — it’s what this weekend says about his ceiling with Ferrari. P2, from P5, with an authoritative move on Verstappen along the way, reads like a driver whose bad days might not be the defining story after all.
And if it takes a few quiet dinners with his mum in Montreal to get that version of Hamilton back more often, Ferrari won’t be the only one hoping she clears her calendar.
