The Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was the track where Lewis Hamilton took his first win and that too in his rookie season. Since then, Hamilton has gone on to win six more times at the circuit in Montreal and holds the record for the most wins at the Canadian GP with seven victories. Yet after a miserable 2024 Canadian GP, Lewis Hamilton throws a subtle jab at Toto Wolff and Co. just a couple of weeks after the Monaco GP confession.

Lewis Hamilton hasn’t had the best of years with Mercedes in 2024 as he’s been out-qualified by his teammate eight times this season and has only beaten Russell once in qualifying, which was in Miami. After being beaten at the 2024 Monaco GP qualifying once again by Russell, Lewis Hamilton came out with a feisty statement as he said, “I don’t anticipate being ahead of George in qualifying, particularly this year. But we just gotta keep pushing. The races are strong.” When the reporter asked, “All Year?” Lewis Hamilton replied, “We’ll see.”

And while many may consider Lewis Hamilton’s Canadian GP to be a success as he started P7 and finished P4, the 7X champ wasn’t happy with his own performance. He suggested on the F1TV Live that if he had qualified better, he could’ve been in for a race win around Montreal. However, highlighting what went wrong at the qualifying, he threw a jab at Toto Wolff, suggesting some things caused him not to qualify well on Saturday. 

After the Canadian GP, Lewis Hamilton said, “It was just over the weekend a poor performance from myself. Some other things came in yesterday and one of my poorest races. I need to go back to the drawing board. Big thank you to everyone at the factory for bringing a car that we are capable to fight with. I think the car was capable of winning this weekend, but we will take the points.”

Is the qualifying problem in Canada linked to Hamilton’s comments from Monaco where he mentioned about not finishing ahead of Russell? Regardless, let’s see where things went wrong for Hamilton during the Canadian GP Main Race.

Lewis Hamilton’s Canadian GP: How things went down for the 7X champ

While it isn’t impossible to overtake around Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, it isn’t an easy task as well. Starting P7, Hamilton had the massive task of overtaking multiple cars. After getting an amazing launch off the grid, Hamilton overtook Ricciardo and found himself behind Alonso. The master of defense Alonso was able to keep Hamilton behind for multiple laps as the duo leaked time to the frontrunners. Fortunately, a safety car caused everyone to pit and Hamilton overtook Alonso in the pits.

After the rain stopped, everyone pitted for slicks and Hamilton was on the mediums, the same as the frontrunners. Having built a gap to Alonso, Hamilton pitted under the safety car for new hards, but on the radio, it suggested that he wanted to stay on the faster tires, i.e. the used medium. After Russell made a mistake, Hamilton overtook him, but being on the harder tire, it cost him a position as his teammate on mediums overtook him, dropping him out of the points. 

Looking at the pace the Merćedes had, Hamilton definitely missed the chance for a race win all because of the poor qualifying position.