Lewis Hamilton's best grid position since the Chinese Grand Prix three months ago may point towards a breakthrough at last after some challenging times in his first Formula 1 season at Ferrari, but that is not a view he shares.
Despite appearing better able to attack things as he ended up fifth in qualifying for the Canadian GP, the seven-time champion claimed afterwards that it was pretty much business as usual amid a campaign where he is still trying to get used to his new surroundings.
"It feels the same," he said after qualifying, as he played down any talk of this being a turning point. "Definitely not the best I've felt."
Instead, Hamilton suggested that the biggest gain in Montreal came from Ferrari having managed to deliver a weekend of consistent progress with its car – and not finding itself hitting a snag that put him on the backfoot.
"More often than not we go through FP1 and then at previous races FP2s have not been so great, because there's been something wrong with the car - like the floor's not working or the rear wing's stopped working," Hamilton explained.
"There's always been something that meant we were down on downforce or something. So then you have a bad FP2 and you're kind of recovering in FP3.
"But we had a good solid day yesterday and then today we made progress. We didn't change a huge amount, and the car felt solid. We moved forwards - which I think is a first for this season. So I'm grateful to get through to Q3."
With Ferrari not having been aggressive with updates this year, Hamilton said changing his driving style was more useful than doing things differently with the car.
"Probably today most progress came from my driving, changing and adapting my driving style," he said.
"I just made a few changes in how I was driving the car. This car drives so differently to what I had before. You go into low-speed corners and you're waiting and waiting - it doesn't want to turn. It's definitely not suited for this circuit.
"So it's just incremental steps. We've not had any upgrades or anything like that, it's been the same car for quite some time now. And with the same package each weekend, I'm just challenging the guys.
"I'm constantly battling the engineers, asking them questions. Because they set things up and are like 'this is how we always do it' and I'm like 'what about this?'.
"So we work on trying things and bit by bit, we are making progress. We're improving our qualifying from Monaco onwards, which is positive. Ultimately we need upgrades. We need an upgrade to be able to fight the guys up front."
Ferrari has openly talked about a suspension change being worked on to help address some ride height sensitivities that are affecting its aerodynamic platform.
And while Hamilton is biding his time waiting for that development to arrive, he understands that there is a bigger picture at play relating to not taking resources away from 2026.
"It's my first half of the year in a new team," he said. "It's interesting to see how different teams work and operate. There have been times in my career where you've had a whole bunch of upgrades very, very early on in a season and you plough ahead very early. Then you stop and taper off.
"Sometimes it's been slower. It's also in the last year of this generation of car, it's harder to find performance. And also you can be focused on next year.
"The fact is with this car hopefully we can still fight for second in the constructors' championship. That would be great.
"But I want a car that can win next year so that's the priority. That's what we've come here to get."
