Lewis Hamilton has revealed that he changed his Formula 1 preparation after finding that work completed in Ferrari’s simulator did not always translate accurately to the circuit.
The seven-time world champion decided to sit out simulator sessions before the Canadian Grand Prix and instead focused more closely on data analysis with his engineers.
Hamilton said simulator preparation could sometimes leave him having to reverse much of the work once he arrived at the track.
“With simulations, I feel that the goalposts are always moving,” Hamilton said.
“Last year I used it every week and, more often than not, I felt that you do all the work on the sim and you find a set-up that you’re comfortable with, you get to the track and everything’s opposite, so you’re undoing the things you’ve learned.”
Hamilton explained that differences between the simulator and the real car could affect his approach to corners as well as the set-up he expected to use during a race weekend.
“The set-up that you felt was good on the simulator is not the same as the track sometimes,” he added. “Sometimes it is, so it’s kind of hit and miss.”
The Briton instead carried out what he described as a deeper examination of corner balance, mechanical balance, braking and driving technique with his Ferrari engineers.
Hamilton stressed that his decision was not a criticism of Ferrari’s simulator facility or the employees operating it.
He described Ferrari’s simulator as the best he had seen and praised the team for responding to his feedback and making changes to the system.
“The sim is amazing,” Hamilton said. “It’s an amazing space to work in. It’s the best sim I’ve ever seen and the best group of people.”
Hamilton also made clear that he had not abandoned simulator work permanently.
He believes it remains an important tool for developing areas such as electrical power deployment, particularly under Formula 1’s new generation of power-unit regulations.
However, his experience highlights one of the central challenges of modern Formula 1 development: correlation.
A simulator can reproduce thousands of set-up combinations before a car reaches the circuit, but its usefulness depends on how accurately the virtual model reflects the behaviour of the physical car, tyres and track surface.
When that correlation is imperfect, drivers may arrive at a Grand Prix with expectations that do not match the handling of the car.
Hamilton pointed to his performance in China as evidence that a different preparation method could work. He did not complete simulator work before that weekend, which produced what he described as his best result of the season at that stage.
His revised approach also allowed him to work more directly with his race engineers on the braking difficulties he had experienced since joining Ferrari.
Although Hamilton expects to return to the simulator when it offers a clear benefit, he appears prepared to take a more selective approach rather than treating simulator mileage as an essential part of every Grand Prix build-up.
