His second successive podium has Lewis Hamilton confident that Mercedes is heading in the right direction.

Though teammate George Russell never saw the chequered flag, Hamilton's second successive podium is a clear sign that Mercedes is on the ascendant.

Getting the jump on Fernando Alonso at the start, the seven-time world champion eventually succumbed to the persistent Spaniard on Lap 22. There followed, "70 laps of qualifying" as Hamilton pursued his quarry, albeit it to no avail.

Nonetheless, the upgrade package initially introduced at Monaco, and put to excellent use at Barcelona a week later, appears to be having the desired effect.

"It's honestly been a great weekend for us," he told reporters at race end, "we are slowly chipping away.

"The Astons took a little bit of a step this weekend when they added the upgrades," he continued, "but we are working on bringing some more moving forwards.

"To just have this consistency and be up on the podium here in Montreal... to be up there with two world champions... I was really excited to be third and just try to be in that mix, but unfortunately, we just didn't have the pace today.

"We knew this weekend, this wouldn't be our strongest circuit, as we struggle in the lower speed corners particularly, and that's really where I was losing to Fernando and Max, just on traction out of Turn 2, and pretty much every corner.

"But we've got a lot of work to do to just add rear downforce to the car, and a little bit more efficiency, but we are chipping away.

"I do believe we will get there at some stage," he insisted. "Max was a little bit gone, but I think our pace was a little bit closer today, so we are going in the right direction."

Check out our Sunday gallery from Montreal here.