Racing
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Jenson Button has urged Lewis Hamilton to keep working in Ferrari’s simulator after the seven-time world champion said the tool had pushed him in the wrong setup direction in Miami.
Hamilton said after that weekend that he would change his approach before the Canadian Grand Prix rather than continue preparing in the same way. “The way we’ve been preparing currently isn’t working,” he said. “As I said after qualifying, I lost a lot of time in the simulator, it sent me in the wrong direction. I’m not saying I’m going to ditch it but I’m going to use it differently. We’ll see how that goes at the next race.”
Button, Hamilton’s former McLaren team-mate, accepted the problem but said the answer was not to step back from simulator work altogether. Speaking to Sky Sports News, the 2009 world champion said: “The last couple of races haven’t been easy for him, and sometimes you can get a little bit lost in the simulator by going down the wrong direction with set-up.” But he added: “You still need to do it though, there’s homework that is needed to be done away from the track.”
That view reflects how Button sees Hamilton’s wider Ferrari adaptation. He said the difficulties were understandable after Hamilton left “a team that he has been with for a very long time and won multiple world championships with” and moved into “a team that is not only different, it’s Italian, your team-mates speak Italian, but you don’t.” Button described Hamilton’s first Ferrari season as “a really tough year.”
Even so, Button believes Hamilton now looks more settled inside the team. He said that “from the word go he seems a lot more confident in himself, a lot more confident in the people he is working with in the team.”
That is why Button expects Hamilton to arrive in Montreal ready to respond, despite the simulator debate that followed Miami. “I think Lewis will turn up with a lot of confidence in Montreal,” he said, with Hamilton heading to a track he enjoys and where he shares the record for most victories.