Hamilton denied front-row shot in Canada as telemetry exposes Ferrari weakness

Canada delivered a familiar qualifying story: the same top five as Friday, and once again Ferrari left wondering what might have been with Lewis Hamilton.

Just how much better could they have done, and what was that tiny deficit they were missing? We uncover the answers with the help of telemetry data.

How high could Hamilton have been on the grid?

Since the start of the season, as well as after the new set of updates that Mercedes brought to Montreal, the pace of the W17 remains untouchable, meaning that McLaren is currently Ferrari’s only realistic competitor.

However, even though the Maranello team has done a brilliant job regarding the car’s baseline chassis and aerodynamics, the crucial fact is that McLaren uses the Mercedes power unit, while Ferrari still lags behind in that department – which, unfortunately for them, shows on track.

If we look back at the telemetry data, the characteristics we saw during the Sprint shootout are repeating themselves.

Ferrari, and Hamilton in particular, have been very strong in the slow and medium-speed corners this weekend.

If we compare Russell’s and Hamilton’s Q3 laps, we can see that Hamilton makes the difference at the start of the lap. He manages to maintain a higher apex speed through the first two chicanes on the track and is more aggressive on throttle application, especially on the exit of Turn 7.

On the other hand, the places where the Mercedes driver strikes back are primarily the straights, but also the Turn 8–Turn 9 chicane, which for some reason has been the crucial point of the entire weekend.

In the Sprint shootout, Hamilton made a minor mistake here which cost him third on the grid for the Sprint race. This time, during his second flying lap attempt in Q3, the rear end stepped out on Hamilton as he got on the power exiting Turn 9. He had to make steering corrections, putting his outside wheels onto the grass and committing an error big enough to force him to abort his hot lap.

Because of this, Hamilton effectively had only one proper flying lap in the final part of qualifying – whereas Russell had two in the last three minutes of Q3 alone.

Another interesting detail that has also been present all weekend is the straight after the final corner of the lap, which is longer in Canada than is usually the case. Unlike Mercedes and McLaren, Ferrari exits onto this mini-straight with a significantly depleted, if not completely empty battery, meaning they lose a lot of time in just the final few metres.

Note the delta line rising exactly at this point:

If we compare Hamilton’s and Norris’s fastest laps, we will notice that this section of the track actually decided the winner of their head-to-head battle.

Up until the exit of the final chicane, the gap between them is almost non-existent. McLaren is better on the straights while Ferrari handles the corners better, and the sum of this is zero – right up until the final straight on the track.

What the data shows is that Hamilton had the necessary speed to beat the McLaren drivers; he was just missing a bit of luck. The seven-time world champion, who has won seven times in Canada, has been driving truly phenomenally throughout the entire weekend so far. He was also consistently faster than Leclerc, who for some reason is really struggling to adapt to this rear-limited, low-grip track.

However, it is precisely these small details and the lack of power unit performance and efficiency that have put the Ferrari drivers in a position to start the race behind their rivals. What we saw during the Sprint race was that it was easier for Hamilton and Leclerc to defend against the cars behind than to attack the cars ahead.

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Furthermore, the race pace deficit compared to Mercedes is still 0.3 seconds, which is too much to even think about fighting them. As we said, the only realistic opponent is McLaren, but Ferrari will have to exploit their advantage at the start of the race and execute a better strategy if they want to fight for that final spot on the podium.

We must not forget the weather forecast either, which predicts a wet race. In that case, we will have the very first wet race with this new generation of cars, which represents a massive unknown for both us spectators and the teams themselves. Whether this will close the gaps between the teams and allow the drivers to bring their wet-weather driving skills to the forefront we will discover very soon.

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