Around this time eight years ago Lewis Hamilton was receiving one of his well-decorated life’s greatest honours.
Hamilton had just blasted to pole with a 0.330-second advantage over title rival Sebastian Vettel. It was pole 65 of the Briton’s career, matching Ayrton Senna’s prolific qualifying tally.
In recognition of him equalling his idol, the Senna family presented Hamilton with one of Ayrton’s helmets.
“I’m shaken, I’m speechless,” he said in front of the Montreal crowd.
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The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve has been one of the Briton’s strongest circuits, and the following day he again emerged victorious, leading every lap and setting the fastest lap for a rare career grand slam.
It felt at the time like there was no stopping Hamilton, who took another bite out of Vettel’s title lead on his way to what would be his fourth of an eventual seven drivers championships.
This weekend Hamilton returns to what historically been pencilled in as a victory for him, him having won the race a record-equalling seven times. It was the site of his maiden victory in just his sixth grand prix start.
But those days feel like a long time ago now.
The last time Formula 1 saw Hamilton was on Sunday night at the Spanish Grand Prix almost two weeks ago, when he finished sixth after being passed by Nico Hülkenberg’s Sauber during the final laps.
Earlier in the race he’d been forced to let teammate Charles Leclerc through because the Monegasque was so forcefully faster in the Ferrari car. Leclerc eventually finished third, capitalising on Max Verstappen’s late tyre trouble.
Downtrodden and despondent, Hamilton described it as “the worst race I’ve experienced” in terms of car balance. He had “no idea why it was so bad” but knew there were “zero” positives to be drawn from his performance.
Asked by Sky Sports whether Ferrari would be able to work out his problems in the days after the race, the Briton was pessimistic.
“I’m sure they won’t,” he said. “It’s probably just me.”
His subsequent message to the media, repeated several times, was: “I want to head home”.
Every time you think Hamilton’s maiden Ferrari season has hit rock bottom, it has a habit of finding a new level of disconsolation.
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A SEASON OF FALSE DAWNS
Frédéric Vasseur, whose principalship of the team was integral to poaching Hamilton from Mercedes, has had to hold a defensive line on the Briton’s struggles several times this season, and Barcelona was no exception.
“I think [Hamilton] did 70 per cent of the race in front of [George] Russell,” Vasseur said, noting that Russell finished fourth behind Leclerc. “I’m not sure that Russell said that the race was a disaster.
“We had an issue on the car in the last [stint] before the safety car, and the result is not good, but [Hamilton] did 45 laps in front of Russell.”
He chose not to reveal the cause of Hamilton’s “issue”.
And while it’s true that Hamilton spent a lot of time ahead of Russell, it’s the gap to Leclerc that is most concerning more than a third of the way through the campaign.
Hamilton qualified ahead of Leclerc in Barcelona for just the second time this season, a welcome boost even if it took his teammate making one fewer run on fresh softs in a strategy ploy for the race.
But the optimism from that result lasted only 10 laps. Hamilton and Leclerc got good starts, rising to fourth and fifth respectively, but it was clear the seven-time champion was the slower driver.
By lap 10 Hamilton’s pace was compromising Leclerc’s pace, and team orders had them switch positions.
Leclerc put 10 seconds on Hamilton in the following 18 laps — an advantage of 0.56 seconds per lap — a margin that remained consistent throughout the race to the late safety car interruption despite differing strategies.
In that sense it was a perfectly ordinary weekend for Hamilton, whose record against Leclerc this year has been concerningly one-sided.
Lewis Hamilton vs Charles Leclerc
Qualifying result: 7.8 average
Qualifying head to head: 2-7 to Leclerc
Qualifying differential: 2.0 places behind Leclerc
Time differential: 0.207 seconds slower than Leclerc
Race result: 6.5 average
Race head to head: 1-7 to Leclerc
Race differential: 1.9 places behind Leclerc
Points: 71-94 to Leclerc
It’s not that Hamilton has been obliterated. His average position deficits of 2.0 places in qualifying and 1.9 places in races rank the Ferrari teammates as the fourth and third closest pairing respectively.
It’s that the glimpses of Hamilton’s potential have been vanishingly rare.
Retrospect recontextualises Hamilton’s victory in the Shanghai sprint as a flash in the pan rather than the start of something great. His late-race spell in Imola that got him agonisingly close to the podium — the only grand prix in which he’s finished ahead of Leclerc — looks almost totally inexplicable.
Nine races into the season and Hamilton looks as adrift as he ever has in his red overalls.
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SLIM HOPES FOR CANADA
It’s clear now that the pre-season optimism for a Ferrari championship challenge was badly misplaced. Though the team moved to second in the constructors championship after the Spanish Grand Prix, it’s a whopping 197 points behind McLaren, which has already amassed more than twice the Italian team’s score.
That’s despite Ferrari, like McLaren, gambling on a new development direction for the final year of this set of regulations that it hoped would build on last year’s successful run-in, when it came from seemingly nowhere to fall just 14 points short of the title.
According to respected Italian journalist Franco Nugnes, there’s now an acceptance at Maranello that the SF-25 is simply a bad car rather than a title challenger waiting to be unlocked by the right set of upgrades. Reportedly Hamilton is pushing for the team to abandon 2025 in the hope of maximising next season.
This should be taken into account when weighing up Hamilton’s season so far. It’s arguably never been harder to change teams than in the ground-effect era, when the cars have such intricate peculiarities in the way they perform. Jumping into a compromised car makes it that much harder.
There’s also now a strong case to argue that Hamilton simply hasn’t mastered the ground-effect era and the demands it makes on the way drivers approach their craft.
And again, while Hamilton has been comprehensively beaten by Leclerc, he hasn’t been destroyed; he’s been outscored by 2.6 points per round this season, enough to stay in touch and enough to capitalise on the unbalanced line-ups at Red Bull Racing and Mercedes.
Leclerc has only three podiums for the year, one of which — in Spain — was clearly fortunate for the timing of the safety car, and the Monegasque is only one place ahead of Hamilton on the title table.
That notwithstanding, this weekend could be Ferrari’s last roll of the dice on salvaging something from this season. A major upgrade comprising a new floor and, crucially, new rear suspension has been in the works. Expectations were for a July debut, perhaps in Silverstone; Autosport now reports the new parts could appear in Canada instead.
Combined the new parts are targeted at correcting the ride-height compromises made after the team’s double disqualification in China, which in Hamilton’s case was due to excessive plank wear. Raising the car at subsequent weekends has negatively impacted the way it handles, which in turn has made it uncompetitive.
Getting it back into that sweet spot could see the increasingly unloved SF-25 back as a regular, genuine podium contender, which in turn could see Hamilton back on a steadier trajectory of acclimatisation.
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‘I HAVE ALSO DONE GREAT THINGS’
The timing couldn’t be better for Hamilton, and not just because of his woeful weekend in Spain.
Canada is a circuit he loves and at which he’s always excelled. His six poles — 2017 was his last — puts him equal with Michael Schumacher for P1 starts at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. He’s also tied with the German legend on seven victories at this track, the most of any driver.
Only twice — in 2018 and last season — did he finish the Canadian Grand Prix off the podium, and he’s never finished lower than fifth.
The high-speed nature of the track will punish the Ferrari car if its upgrades don’t work. If they can trigger some improvement, then Hamilton should be tipped to have a strong weekend that gets his season back on track.
And if they don’t, and if he has a bad weekend?
Hamilton has already considered that question.
In a buoyant mood around a month ago upon arrival in Imola, his first race in Italy as a Ferrari driver, Hamilton took it upon himself to reframe his time at the Scuderia as being about more than the potential sugar hit of immediate victories, as had seemed possible during the eternal hope of the off-season.
“We don’t pin it to one race,” he said. “I’m not judging our success by a short amount of races — half a season, one season.
“Let’s talk at the end of my career here at Ferrari, at the end of a few years here at Ferrari, and then let’s talk about what we’ve done. That’s when we can look back and say whether or not we were successful.
“These few months are paving stones towards where we’re going.”
Despite his monosyllabism just a few weeks later after his dire performance in Spain, Hamilton can also be loquacious in reflection when he’s in the right mood. On a good day, at the right time, he can be the most open driver on the grid, offering up genuine insight into his inner workings.
Thursday in Imola was one of those days.
“I think the other thing is I often find myself having to remind myself I have won seven world titles,” he said candidly. “I have won more than any other driver in history.
“I have to remind myself that I have also done great things and that while things are not always going to be great — we’re having this period of time — things will get better if you continue to believe and you continue to push and you continue to work.“
Hamilton’s Ferrari switch clearly hasn’t yet gone to plan. Both him and the team expected — and expect — more.
But it’s far too soon to judge its success or failure.
Those glory days of Canada 2017 might yet return. Just probably not this year.