Lewis Hamilton will avoid using Ferrari’s simulator before the Canadian Grand Prix after claiming it misled him on car setup ahead of the Miami race weekend.
Hamilton had a disappointing Miami weekend, finishing the sprint race in seventh place and the grand prix in sixth after damage from a collision with Franco Colapinto on the opening lap cost him performance.
Simulators have become a crucial tool in teams’ preparation for F1 races, with drivers spending hours assessing different setup options in the virtual world in order to arrive at a circuit with a clear setup direction.
However, the results from the simulator are only as good as the correlation between the virtual world and reality, and Hamilton claims the setup he started the weekend with in Miami did not work in the real world.
“I’m going to have a different approach in the next race because the way we’re preparing at the moment is not helping, and so we’ll see how that goes for the next race,” Hamilton said.
Asked if the correlation between simulator and track was the issue, he added: “Ultimately it’s always correlation, but we go on it and then we get to the track and the car feels different when it gets on track.”
Hamilton, who started racing in F1 when simulator technology was in its infancy, believes his time between races can be better spent talking with engineers at Ferrari’s factory in Maranello than using the simulator.
“You know I don’t like simulators in general, but I sit at the simulator every week on the build up to this race, working on correlation constantly and you go on it, you prepare for the track, you drive it and you get the car setup to a certain place and then you come to the track and that set up doesn’t work,” he explained.
“And on the sprint weekend, for example, you’ve only got practice one, you don’t really want to veer off from your setup too far, like with a big suspension change and so you stay with it and then you make a change going to qualifying and then you’ve only got six laps to get on top of it.
“In an ideal world I should have started where Charles [Leclerc] was at the beginning of the weekend on P1 and I think we would have just had a stronger weekend from there.
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“So I’m not going to go on the simulator between now and the next race. I’ll still go and hold meetings at the factory and stuff, but I’m just going to back away from it for a little bit and see. Because when we went to China I had the best weekend without sim.”
Hamilton has a strong record at the Canadian Grand Prix, winning seven times in Montreal, but is not convinced this year’s Ferrari will be well suited to the circuit’s long straights.
“I’m looking forward to it, but we need to see if we can cut some drag before the next race,” he said. “Because on the straight line we’ve got that deficit and so we’ve got to have a look into that.”
