Is the 'Kardashian Curse' Broken? Lewis Hamilton Defies the Odds to Secure P2 in Monaco

Lewis Hamilton finished second at Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix to move ahead of Ferrari team-mate George Russell in the Formula 1 drivers' standings, as the seven-time world champion credited 'amazing' support from Kim Kardashian in the paddock for helping fuel his strongest season in years.

After a curious sub-plot built up around the race weekend. Kardashian, attending her first grand prix since the pair began dating earlier this year, was a visible presence in the Ferrari garage on both Saturday and Sunday. Online, the old trope of a 'Kardashian curse' was dusted off and recycled with familiar glee. On track, Hamilton quietly put in one of his sharpest drives since joining Ferrari, securing P2 behind a dominant Kimi Antonelli and climbing to his highest championship position since 2021.

Hamilton now sits second in the standings, 66 points behind the teenage Antonelli, who leads the title race after winning five consecutive grands prix. For a driver who endured a bruising first season in red, and left Mercedes under a cloud of mutual frustration, the symbolism is hard to miss. He is not back to his incomparably ruthless best, but he is somewhere much closer to the version of Hamilton Ferrari thought they were signing.

Lewis Hamilton Thanks Kim Kardashian For 'Amazing' Support

Hamilton did not pretend Kardashian's presence was incidental. Speaking after the race to Sky Sports F1, the Ferrari driver sounded openly appreciative of the reality star and business mogul spending the weekend embedded with his camp.

'It's amazing to have her come this weekend and have the support,' Hamilton said. 'But, you know, with my friends, incredible turnout, just overall, the people. It's amazing to have good people around you and good people supporting you and she does that for me every day.'

It is not standard F1 debrief material. Yet it tracks with what many in the paddock have sensed this year. Hamilton, who spent much of last season looking weary and intermittently irritable, has been visibly lighter in recent months. The relationship is not confirmed in any formal sense, and nothing about their future is settled, so all of this should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, the cameras do not lie about who is in the Ferrari hospitality suite.

Hamilton arrived in Monaco having failed to score a single podium in his first 24 races for Ferrari last year. It was, by his own account, a 'horrendous' season. The car was inconsistent, intra-team politics were noisy, and the fairytale move from Mercedes threatened to look like a slow-motion miscalculation.

This season has flipped that narrative. Hamilton now has three podiums from six starts in 2026, and he leads Charles Leclerc in both qualifying and race head-to-heads. That matters in Maranello. Beating the local hero, particularly after such an underwhelming debut year, buys time and trust.

Monaco Drive Highlights Ferrari Revival For Lewis Hamilton

Hamilton's Monaco result owed something to opportunism as well as raw pace. While Antonelli controlled the race out front to keep Mercedes' unbeaten start to the season intact, Hamilton spent much of the afternoon managing tyres and track position ahead of Leclerc.

His key slice of good fortune came under the Safety Car triggered by Lance Stroll's crash. Having picked up a five-second penalty for speeding in the pit lane at his first stop, Hamilton was understandably anxious about the threat from Leclerc. But when Ferrari double-stacked their cars, Leclerc was forced to queue behind, allowing Hamilton to serve the penalty without losing track position. It was a rare moment where strategy, circumstance and execution all broke his way.

The bigger picture, though, is that Hamilton was in the right place to benefit. Second in Monaco is rarely won by accident. After the race he made a point of stressing what it meant inside Ferrari.

'Very, very thankful to my team because coming from such a horrendous year last year finally in the position where I'm reigniting the passion and belief that they had in me when I first joined,' he told Sky. 'After a really big slump that we had last year, to come back up is great to see the fight in them. They are doing a fantastic job. We have a lot of work to do to close that gap.'

The gap he refers to is, above all, to Antonelli. Hamilton reserved strikingly warm praise for the 19-year-old Italian, his de facto successor at Mercedes, who on Sunday became the youngest-ever winner of the Monaco Grand Prix.

'Kimi was amazing today. He has been amazing all weekend,' Hamilton said. 'Mercedes are clearly a bit ahead of everybody for quite some time and we couldn't match them. He did a phenomenal job and I'm so grateful that I get to witness him in his moment – and this is his moment. So I'm really grateful that I could just be up there and get to share it and see that.'

If there is a curse here, it is the one Hamilton has carried since Abu Dhabi 2021. Ferrari cannot banish that. Neither, in truth, can Kardashian. What they can do, and what Monaco quietly suggested is happening, is return Hamilton to the centre of the story rather than its margins.