Fred Vasseur has been around long enough to know exactly how the Ferrari radio channel can turn into a global microphone. Still, even he seemed surprised by the reaction to a throwaway post-race message in Montreal.
“Good job, Luigi.”
That was it. No cryptic strategy code, no spicy debrief, just the Ferrari team principal congratulating Lewis Hamilton after his best Sunday in red so far — and then promptly dissolving into laughter when Sky F1’s Ted Kravitz asked him about it in the pit lane. Vasseur’s chuckle went on and on, the kind of uncontrollable fit that tells you the paddock has been living with the joke all weekend.
Hamilton, for his part, didn’t exactly fan the flames — but he didn’t put them out either. Asked where the nickname came from, he shrugged it off with a line that sounded both plausible and faintly amused: in Italy, he said, people used to call him “Luigi” when he was a kid.
It’s a tiny moment, and in another team it might not survive the Sunday night highlight reel. At Ferrari, it becomes its own little cultural signal: Hamilton isn’t just passing through, he’s being absorbed — teased, even — in that uniquely Maranello way. The internal shorthand is forming, the warmth is evident, and importantly, it’s arriving alongside the results.
Canada delivered Hamilton’s strongest finish since joining Ferrari, second behind Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes. It was his second podium of the 2026 season after taking third in China back in March, and it hauled him level with Charles Leclerc on podiums for the year — two apiece, Leclerc’s coming in Australia and Japan.
That matters, because the early part of this season has felt like a constant calibration: a new car, a new team, and a teammate who’s had Ferrari orbiting around him for years. Montreal didn’t magically erase the adaptation curve, but it did something more valuable in the short term — it underlined that Hamilton can be properly in the fight on merit, not just hovering around the edges waiting for a strange race.
And if anyone needed a reminder that Hamilton’s headspace is still very much “forward”, he offered it before the weekend had even properly started.
In Thursday’s FIA press conference at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, Hamilton addressed the familiar noise about his age and how long he intends to keep going. The response was sharp, and very Hamilton: he said people are trying to retire him, that it isn’t on his mind, and that he’s already planning the next five years. He emphasised he’s under contract, “everything’s 100 per cent clear”, and finished with the kind of line that lands like a challenge: he’s going to be around “for quite some time, so get used to it.”
It’s hard not to read that as a subtle message to multiple audiences at once — critics, rivals, and perhaps even those within F1 who assume this chapter is more epilogue than main act. Whatever the motivation, Ferrari won’t mind hearing their most high-profile signing of the era talk like a man settling in rather than winding down.
The one missing ingredient, of course, is the win. Hamilton still hasn’t stood on the top step since the 2024 Belgian Grand Prix, an absence that hangs in the background even when the podiums are flowing again. But the timing now gets interesting, because the calendar’s next stop is Monaco — a weekend where Ferrari’s current strengths and weaknesses could flip from nuisance to advantage.
The SF-26 has struggled for straight-line speed so far this season, but Monte Carlo doesn’t hand out points for drag efficiency. It rewards traction, rotation, confidence under braking, and the ability to commit to millimetres. Ferrari is widely regarded as a genuine contender on the streets, and that’s not paddock politeness — it’s a read on how this car should behave when top speed stops being the defining currency.
Hamilton arrives three points behind Leclerc in the standings, close enough for a single weekend to swing the internal narrative either way. He’s also a three-time Monaco winner (2008, 2016, 2019), which gives him a ready-made platform: this isn’t a specialist circuit where he needs to “learn” anything. Meanwhile Leclerc will walk into his home race with the memory of a dominant win there in 2024, plus the unmistakable confidence that Monaco brings out his best.
So yes, “Luigi” is a fun side plot — the kind of humanising detail Ferrari fans tend to latch onto — but it sits on top of something more serious. Ferrari now has two drivers with genuine Monaco credentials, separated by three points, in a season where the team believes its car should finally feel at home at one of the calendar’s most unforgiving venues.
If Hamilton wants to turn a cheerful nickname into something with edge, Monaco is where you do it. At Ferrari, affection comes easily. Authority takes pole position.
