Lewis Hamilton praised Ferrari for "moving mountains" with him behind the scenes to help produce the podium he was able to deliver at the Canadian Grand Prix.
The 41-year-old finished second on Sunday in Montreal, behind Kimi Antonelli, his best result since joining Ferrari at the start of last season.
It was the culmination of a strong weekend, which saw Hamilton out-qualify teammate Charles Leclerc for the sprint and the race itself.
He had endured a miserable debut season with the team last year but Canada was his second podium of 2026, after the Chinese Grand Prix in March.
"Grazie," Hamilton said in the direction of his Ferrari mechanics in a post-race interview. "These guys have welcomed me with open arms, and it's been pretty tough over the past year and a bit, so to finally find our sweet spot and have a good weekend has really been an amazing feeling."
In Sunday's post-race news conference, he added: "I had so much fun out there all weekend. 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."
After the Miami Grand Prix two weeks ago, Hamilton had revealed he would forgo his usual preparation in Ferrari's simulator, wanting instead to lean on his own gut instincts when it came to set-up.
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Hamilton has taken a much different approach this year across the board, having also parted ways with 2025 race engineer Ricardo Adami.
The seven-time world champion is currently working with Cedric Santi, who had replaced Adami in an interim capacity at the start of the year.
He stayed firm this week on what he wanted from the car and he praised Santi for the result, as well as Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur for trusting him on his approach.
When asked what had been different about this weekend, Hamilton said: "The prep before. I chose a different set-up this weekend through just ciphering through the data, working really well with my engineer. He's absolutely awesome and I'm really loving working with him.
"And my No. 2 did a fantastic job this weekend and helped me really pull more performance out of the car, getting into a much sweeter place. And I was able to attack all the corners finally. And as I said, there's a lot of changes that I've had to ask for, and Fred's been super supportive and again also moving mountains in order to make me comfortable. And it's finally starting to show in my performance. So, thank you to the team."